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Hello, I'm 2 mo into using ownerez and have primarily had my property on Airbnb, which itself is a pretty well oiled machine. Now I want to have an option for direct booking that I can guide my family n friends to, if they ask. Is there an article on step by step directions on how to go about direct booking?

There are lots of articles available online if you simply search for "Direct Booking for my Vacation Rental" on Google or any other search engine, but here are the basics.

As suggested, you don't even need a website to do bookings directly with guests. Any decent Property Management System like OwnerRez will allow you to provide a quote directly to a guest via email, which they can then go online and book from. The PMS provides a page online where the guest can see, and complete the booking form.

Once the guest completes the booking form provided by the PMS, they can mail you a cheque/check to pay for the booking. In a quick nutshell, that's the simplest route. However, if you want to make things easiest for your guests and yourself, a few additional steps will smooth the process for both you and your guests.

1) Find and get set up with an online Payment Processor. This is a bank that allows you to accept credit card payments. Some allow regular 'store-front' card processing where you have the guest's card physically in front of you, some allow only online processing, and some allow both. There are a number of online specific processors. A couple that have become very large in the last two decades include PayPal and Stripe, which you may have heard of. There are also some that claim to be dedicated to the vacation rental space, and that they know and can serve our industry best, but I have never understood how they can possibly offer anything better than any large, quality CC processing company. This topic can get very confusing, so do your research and be prepared to be patient and ask lots of questions. The charges for Credit Card processing vary tremendously and because it is essentially a percentage of the amount being charged (usually in the range of 2-3%) it is a flat off-the-top expense that can affect your bottom-line dramatically. You want to pay the minimum that you possibly can, and still have good quality service, because this is one expense of yours that for the most part won't affect your guest's experience one bit. It's just simply a significant cost to you.

Online listing sites like VRBO and AirBnB charge the hosts for their credit card processing fees, so don't think of this as an added expense because you are booking guests directly. You are paying those charges to the listing sites anyway, often more than you would be paying if the guest booked directly with you, because not only do the listing sites charge you, the host, for credit card processing for the money they send you, but they also make you pay for the processing fees for the money they keep! When you think about it, it's kind of an outrageous thing to do. Not many businesses get to force others to pay for their operating expenses!

What all agreements and coverage i need to have in place?

2) You need to establish and have a complete, comprehensive set of Terms and Conditions for renting your place out. These are basically the rules that govern the agreement between yourself and the guest to rent and stay in your property. Again, if you search for a Vacation Rental Terms and Conditions Template online, you will find some generic ones that are an excellent place to start in developing your own set. Every vacation rental needs their own comprehensive set of Terms and Conditions that govern their rental. Ultimately, if you really want to do things right, you should have a lawyer create it suitable for your jurisdiction/location, or at least review what you come up with for legal compliance and enforceability. Once you have have your Terms and Conditions of Rental ready to go, have them available in a text file on your computer ready to copy to various places where you need to share them, and also in a PDF (Portable Document Format) file which can be easily sent or downloaded.

Basically, your PMS will provide a booking format and process which commits the guest to renting your place under your Terms and Conditions, and the guest usually would receive a copy of them as part of the process. Good Terms and Conditions protect both you and your guest, and define what happens in case there is a dispute, damages, etc. It's kind of like insurance, you only really need them when things go wrong, but when things go wrong you'll be really glad you have them, and they are properly done.

Even if you book through websites like VRBO or AirBnB you should still have your own Terms and Conditions in place which every renter agrees to, because the Terms and Conditions of those websites are completely irrelevant and useless to your bookings. This has been tested in court many times. The first thing a judge will say in court regarding a dispute created by a rental situation is "Let's see the agreement between the parties..." You MUST have one.

The Terms and Conditions of third party websites like VRBO and AirBnB are of no value, and legally of no consequence. Go look them up on those sites. The very first thing they say is "This website is NOT a party to any agreement between a host and renter..." And they're not. Those websites are in reality advertising venues only. They pass themselves off as having Terms and Conditions and offering protections and systems that guide and determine relationships between hosts and guests, but truthfully they're completely useless with regard to anything between the host and guest. They present the appearance of having control and influence only in order to justify their involvement in guest transactions, in order to collect their fees. It is how they make money, and they work very hard to protect that image, but legally they have no standing to enforce anything between a host and guest.

Anyone running a vacation rental business would be foolish in my opinion to rely on the Terms and Conditions of a third party that has no legal standing in the agreement between themselves and their guests. Yet millions get sucked into this false sense of security and allow these websites to determine how they run their businesses, or book and patronize private accommodations businesses online through them thinking it somehow protects them. It doesn't.

Vacation rental hosts need to understand that these third-party websites can have all kinds of Terms and Conditions which determine how the website is used, and they do, but what those Terms and Conditions govern is the relationship between the host and the website, or the guest and the website only. The websites cover themselves off by stating If you use this website you agree to our Terms and Conditions... and the host or guest does agree to the site's Terms and Conditions, but only because they use the site and the users allow themselves to be governed by them. They don't have to. Those Terms and Conditions have no enforceability between the host and the guest, and the sites are well aware of it. They just don't broadcast or promote it because their entire business model is based on the concept of providing a 'safe' venue for hosts and guests to conduct business. If the majority of the website users knew the truth about what the websites actually provide and do not, I believe it would significantly affect the website's business.

Most of the 'protection' for guests provided by online listing websites come from the protections provided by the Credit Card Issuing Bank, and in fact, many guests who have problems are told by the websites when the guest calls upon them for help; Call your credit card company! Well, the guests don't need the websites for that 'protection,' and have it any time they use their credit card, so they are just as safe dealing directly with the host when they pay by credit card, as they are when they use their credit card on an online vacation rental listing website.

You may even want to ask if any of the OwnerRez users on these forums would be willing to share their own Terms and Conditions with you to use as a reference in creating your own. Some generous souls may even be willing to do so, however a quality set of Terms and Conditions is a precious business asset, which costs a significant amount of time and money to develop, especially when one properly hires a lawyer to develop or review them, so one shouldn't expect to be able to take and copy a set for free.

Good Terms and Conditions should be a 'living document' in that they should be reviewed, developed and updated each year as business situations and conditions evolve and new circumstances need to be accounted for. For example, the Covid-19 Pandemic caught a lot of vacation rental owners by surprise, with many not having anything in their Terms that governed what happens when a pandemic affects a guest's rental of the property.

A smart vacation rental owner/host 'keeps their ear to the ground' and pays attention to and learns from industry developments so they can adjust and augment their Terms and Conditions as needed.

Also, how do I market my property thru ownerez website?

This is a bit of strange question. You don't market your business through OwnerRez's website. It may be that what you have asked here is not actually what you mean, so please bear with me.

OwnerRez is a supplier of Property Management Software, offered through an online website. This is called SAAS... Software As A Service. Not all software is offered online. Much of it has been traditionally something that you purchase a copy of in a box from a store, supplied on a disk or CD, that you install locally in your own computer. For SAAS, the software is stored in the provider's website, and you can just access it anywhere you can get online to the internet, with your account user name and password.

So OwnerRez's website, or more correctly websiteS, are their own. They are not there for you to use to promote your business. One OwnerRez site promotes OwnerRez to new users, one provides the software that we all use and access as OwnerRez customer/users, and another provides help and support, and these forums.

As part of their service, OwnerRez optionally makes available to their customers the ability to create, use and offer a Promotional Website for their own vacation rental. If you want to have a website to promote your vacation rental, and also provide a place online where your guests may view and book it, this can be done by paying OwnerRez an additional monthly fee, and you will then have a reasonably easy to setup and use website for your own vacation rental.

That is one way of having your own website. Another way is to pay a hosting provider to host a website for you which makes it accessible and available on the internet.

How the website gets created is a separate matter. You can hire a website developer, or you can use a paid or free website development service online to create your website. Many website hosting companies, which you can find online with a simple Google search, offer free do-it-yourself website creation software as an online service in conjunction with their hosting plans. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of providers like this.

You can also use free do-it-yourself website building software that is available online independently. There are a number of these available, the biggest and most common of which is called Wordpress. While originally created to be something that a user can build their own website with, WordPress has grown into an incredible behemoth, so big and complex that many professional website developers work exclusively for others using it, and just about anything one wants to be done can be created in WordPress. It is said to power at least a third of the websites available on the internet. Every hosting provider offers free installation of WordPress on their systems, it is that ubiquitous.

My own vacation rental website, which I have created myself, is done in Wordpress. Managing the site and everything it involves is a part-time to full-time job. I have an interest in this, and I enjoy it, however I recognize the tremendous work and time involved and do not recommend it to others. Honestly, one of the finest, most experienced vacation rental owners I know does their own wordpress site, and it is incredible and of very-high quality. She is also an OwnerRez user. Perhaps she finds it easier and less time-consuming than I do, but I don't know. No doubt, she has a special gift for vacation rental promotion and website creation.

Once you have your own website, no matter how it is created, OwnerRez provides a number of bits of website code called 'widgets' which can be used to incorporate OwnerRez functionality into that site. This allows your website to show your booking calendar, provide inquiry forms, and even display quotes that guests can create themselves by entering their dates.

If you decide to have an OwnerRez hosted website, it comes with all of the OwnerRez widgets and capabilities built in, so it really should be considered as one option for an OwnerRez user to setup and have their own website available online, in the simplest and easiest manner possible. OwnerRez has a number of sample sites available for you to check out to see what the service provides. The website produced is your own site however, and not 'on' OwnerRez's website.

Where do I post it??

You don't 'post' your website. There are no places where you can go and simply post that you have a website that will result in you generating traffic; people that come and visit your website and take the action that you want them to. People won't visit your website just because you have one. It doesn't work that way. They will come to your website if it provides something they need or want, and they can find it.

If you have a link to your website shared somewhere online; for example, you go onto Facebook and make a post telling people you have a website and giving the URL (the internet address or link to the site), then search engines like Google will eventually notice the link, and record that your website is there. Then, if someone goes online and uses a search engine to try and find your website, the search website might show your website in its results, and people can find your website that way. But getting listed by an online search engine is the smallest part of this battle. The big issues are; why would anyone go online and search for your particular website, and if they do, how do you get the search engine to actually show your particular website in their results?

How do you promote your website once it is online?

That is an entirely different subject and one on which entire books have been written. Promoting yourself online is a vast and challenging topic.

Simply having a website is not enough. Just because it is there is no reason to expect that anyone will find it, or see it. The internet is a vast and highly competitive electronic medium, and in trying to promote yourself online you are competing with the very largest and best marketers in the world, and the very worst (many of whom are amateur vacation rental hosts unfortunately!).

The size and scale of the task of online promotion does not mean you shouldn't bother having your own website. Simply having a place online where others can see and book your vacation rental directly with you is as important and fundamental to your business as having the property itself. Even if all you ever use it for is to direct your own personal contacts to it as a place to see and book your property, it is worthwhile to have.

No, you should not ever just use a VRBO or AirBnB listing for this purpose, or any other similar source. You should always have your own website. Any other location for your business to exist online is controlled by others, and subject to their whims, expenses and fees. It leaves you not in control of your business, and beholden to someone else for the very survival and existence of your Vacation Rental Accommodations business.

Every host should ask themselves 'What happens if AirBnB or VRBO shuts down my listing tomorrow and won't allow me back on the platform? Would I have a business?' If the answer is no, then you're not in business for yourself... you are a beholden serf, running a business simply for the profit of online billionaires who see you only as a source of revenue for them; expendable, and easily replaced.

Would appreciate insights. Thank you

I hope this introduction to having an 'option' for direct booking has been helpful to you, and allows you to get started in being able to book your vacation rental property directly with guests without having a third party involved.

Many people who have only been involved in vacation rentals in the last decade can't conceive of operating their rentals without using and relying on third party websites like AirBnB and VRBO, while for others like myself, who have been in this business for many years and never got into it thinking that third-party websites were what the business is all about, have survived and even thrived without them for decades.

I've hosted nearly 1000 guest parties in the last seventeen years, and if all goes well, will host my very FIRST guest booked through AirBnB in one week's time. You may call them a 'well-oiled' machine, but that's what I think of my business as. My experience with AirBnB is that it's a complicated, interfering, PITA entity that only makes the interaction with, and service of, MY guests difficult and much more challenging than it needs to be.

Which brings us to the final thing you really need in order to be able to successfully book guests directly and independently; a change in thinking. The only people that have 'an AirBnB' or 'an AirBnB business' are the owners of the AirBnB website itself. You, and all OwnerRez customers, and AirBnB and VRBO hosts, are all accommodations providers, and we need to think in terms of what's best for ourselves and our guests to make that happen. Ultimately, it isn't even accommodations that we provide – it is hospitality, and once a vacation rental owner understands that, they open up a path for themselves to true success in this industry.

Hi Abegail!

When it comes to the PriceLabs integration, it doesn't pass over any of the discounts that are configured on their platform. It just passes over the rate. So if they are discounting any of the rates, they send us the discounted rate, which the Vrbo promotions would discount on top of that. We suggest setting up the discounts in OwnerRez, instead of PriceLabs, so that they don't send a discounted rate.

Any news about VRBO allowing integration and remaining MOC? It is the only thing preventing me from integrating with VRBO!

What have you all been finding as a result of this change? Have any of you professional PM's (we are mom and pop) figured out if the % should be 18.5%, not .34%?

We switched to 18.34% on Rent and Cleaning Fees at the transition. In transaction details on the platform, once a guest has paid $ to Airbnb, the "Host Fee" amount is now showing as a firm 15.5% on both Rent and Cleaning. Our cleaning fee is technically $170, not $201.18. Will this work out in the wash at tax time?

Ex.-Host payout 4 nights room fee$1,432.00Show breakdownsCleaning fee$201.18Nightly rate adjustment−$143.20Show breakdownsHost service fee (15.5%)−$230.95Total (USD)$1,259.03

Help? Are we charging too much, or not enough? Thanks forum!

-Lisa and Dave 

I'm having the same problem and it's only started happening recently. The messages used to be sent out and I haven't changed any messaging settings, but I've noticed the past few same-day bookings, I've had to send them manually.

Hello!

Can you please submit a ticket to help@ownerrez.com so we can take a look at the formatting for the form messages that have been created? Thank you!

We want to manage our smart locks inside OwnerRez, but since Yale and Kwikset aren’t natively supported, we’d need to use OwnerRez RemoteLock (third-party integration).

For those using this setup, we’d love to know how much you’re paying per lock per month, whether you’re paying both OwnerRez and Remote Lock fees, and how confident you are in the setup’s reliability and day-to-day use.

Thanks in advance!

Thanks for this thread.

I've edited the confirm and pay message but it doesn't output the font formatting I've included in the edit or the information represented by the {fields} I have added.

Perhaps you don't have your commission set to apply to gross but to net, or to gross minus certain expenses? https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/property-management-commission-fee-expenses

It sounds like it but I cannot get the gross rental figure and the commission to add up. Support has suggested that i just used the net rate but of course that drops my income down which i'm not keen on doing.

It sounds like what you’re looking for can be accomplished with an Owner Statement. If you use the PM Module, you can easily customize your statement view for Owner Statements to achieve that. 

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/property-management-owner-statements-setup-configuration 

I’m trying to figure out how to automate sending an invoice out to my customers.

I charge my customers a percentage based on their income. So I want the invoice/statement to show…..

Booking id

OTA

Property

Dates

guest numbers 

gross rental amount

my percentage amount

Ideally a total of the percentage amount (so the amount they owe me).

I can get close, but the figures on the gross and the percentage always seem to be off.

I’ve been playing with this for a few months now and am close to giving up.

Any help would be gratefully received.

Looks like you posted the same thing in the General Chat forum.  I answered this there:
https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/chat/a-new-scam  

Last week we received a 14 night booking.for January. Unusual length for us, especially in the winter. The name on the booking was unusual. Red flags. They bought travel insurance. 

Two days after the booking we received a Stripe Early Fraud Alert, then a day later we were notified of a dispute, reason being the card issuer was notified by the customer that they did not initiate the payment. We accepted the dispute and received a chargeback notice. No problem, we simply cancelled the reservation without processing a refund, sending a notice to the email on the booking and with the message that we were notified by their bank that the transaction was disputed. 

We have received two emails since. The first saying there must be some mistake and asking if they could wire transfer the payment. The second demanding that we process "a proper refund to the card."

Does this sound familiar to anyone? I can't understand the scam here. It seems that if the cc issuer is aware if the fraud that is game over. I'm also mystified by the travel insurance component. I guess I just don't think like a criminal. 

We use Pricelabs for our Company. Within that platform, there are also last minute discounts, far out premiums, etc. Will the VRBO promotions in OR override Pricelabs?

Hello!

Can you please submit a support ticket to help@ownerrez.com, and include screenshots of any errors you're seeing so we can take a look?

We never got any commission reports via Owner Rez (unless we missed them) just emailed invoices. 
It was unclear where to pay, & we had a credit card on file. 
Another invoice appeared, & when I tried to get into our owner account to look at it (no way to look at balances) I saw the credit card wasn’t right, & when I tried to change it, the account shut me out.. for non-payment. 

Never got a notice that the card wasn’t working, no way to check balances, horrible “help” & honestly not great guests, only 2 since we opened Sept 24, either. I’ll be sending them a paper check via certified mail, just to match the level of irritation they have so generously provided. 

We fired VRBO, & are moving towards driving direct bookings, & skipping the tech bro “enshittification” with less & less support, & more & more markup. 
We sincerely hope many more are doing the same. We do the work on the ground, we should keep more of the cash. 

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
😜

Emily DG
antietamdome.com

I was looking at the discounts, then the account got shut down due to their bad billing practices, & we fired them. 
VRBO’s new “commission” system uses the credit card on file .
They didn’t tell us it wasn’t working- & no way to check on the account or balances. 
After an awkward help desk call with some poor person in Southeast Asia or India, I got ANOTHER emailed invoice. 

VRBO is less than 2% of our bookings, & hasn’t given us the best quality guests, so we fired them. 
More & more I would rather people used our direct booking site, & skipped the tech bro upcharge, bad service, & over-reliance on AI (looking at you, AB&B) that leads to a lot of frustration- it took us months to be categorized as “near national parks” despite one being .5 miles away (C&) Canal), & the other (AntietamNB) about 2 miles away. 
I had to repeat the category request at least 6 times. I guess they just got tired of saying no. 

The platforms have gotten incredibly “enshittified” taking more, & providing less, all the time. 
We are moving towards getting as many direct bookings as we can, & telling the platforms (except Crewdogs, they are cool) to take a longer walk off a shorter pier. 

EDG
antietamdome.com

I see there were talks between OR and Sitemiinder about 7 years ago, but does not seem anything ever came from it. 

Site minder connects to a lot more channels than OR, and to niche channels that would help fill the calendar now that the big OTAs are not doing enough.

Can talks for this stat again?

https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/post?forum=general-help&topic=can-or-be-used-for-lodges-bed-and-breakfasts

We created our own web site (Antietamdome.com) & used the “widget” to create a booking window. 
This is the best option for all of us- direct bookings spare us AND our guests the cash scrapes, horrible customer service & billing (looking at you, VRBO, who we fired).
Then get on your socials! 
Put up pictures, stories, “reels” have fun with it. 
We are a work in progress, have made some nice connections in the area via Facebook. 

Here is how to ask for a partial payment from a guest.

Go to the Booking in OwnerRez.

Then click on Transactions (third from left in the green menu at the top left).

Then, on the Transactions Page, click on the drop-down menu item (under the title 'Transactions') labeled Payments and select the third option:

Request Payment from Guest

This will bring up a pop-up dialog box that looks like the following:

In the dialog box select the second Radio Button at the top: Whatever the guest wants to pay (the booking's rules will not be enforced)

The dialog box gives you a few options on what you can do, but most importantly it produces a URL for the Guest Payment Form which provides the option for the guest to enter whatever amount they want to pay, instead of the regular payment form used by OwnerRez standard templates which only allows full payment of the total balance.

You can use the generic payment request email template that OwnerRez provides, or copy the partial payment form URL into a new email of your own composition.

You can also use this when different members of a guest party are making separate payments all on one reservation.

The form also allows for different types of payments, not just credit cards (just like the standard form with only the total balance allowed).

I am posting this because when I needed to send a partial payment request to a guest, and every email form in OwnerRez only allowed the total balance to be used as an amount to be paid, I typed the words 'partial payment' (the most obvious topic description) into OwnerRez help search and nothing came up. Even, Rezzi, the OwnerRez AI system did not have a proper response. (The answers provided by Rezzi were for: Initial Bookings, Multiple Payments, Split Payments Between Guests, and Multi-Month Bookings, the descriptions of which did not apply to what I was asking.)

(For you techy types, the following is added to the payment form URL at the end: ?noRules=true    This change is what modifies the normal form to allow the guest to enter a different payment amount, so you could amend the URL (NOT the link to the payment form URL) in a different template to get the same result, in case you wanted to create a different email or template for your own use.)

Eventually I found what I was looking for, however assuming others may be looking for instructions on having a guest do a partial payment, I thought I would post this here so hopefully when the next OwnerRez user needs this information (or I do because I've forgotten it six months from now!), it will show up in the help system search results.

Current problem with VRBO:
Got an invoice that looked scammy, & when I tried to update payment method, the system hung up, locked me out, & now that account is disabled. There is no way to see if the invoice is legit on the “owner” app, nor is there a way to check balances or update payment methods, tried several times. 

After a 15 minute help desk call I didn’t have time for, I was told I would receive an email. (No email, an hour later..)
VRBO is maybe 2% of our business, & we don’t get the best guests from them. 
I had responded to an “improve your listing” email with a request to chat, never got a reply. 
It’s hard to believe this is a serious company, honestly. 

Is there any reason we should keep this (honestly) slightly worse platform?
AB&B is the “standard” but over-relies on AI, which means that it took weeks & weeks of pestering to get us listed as near national parks (.5 miles & 2 miles) while other places 20 miles away, were listed as “near” national parks. 

What platform would you replace VRBO with, if you already had AB&B?
Our connections are ABB, Google, Crewdogs, & VRBO. Eliminated Booking.com due to their wanting irrelevant tax information, & inability to communicate effectively with guests. 

Thanks for your experience & opinions. 

EDG

Hi Cathleen,

Email History still shows whether an email had been opened or not?

Here is a brief video to show you how that looks:

Email History and Activity Timeline Overview 📧 - Watch Video

As I mention in the video, if there was somewhere else you feel the deliverability should show let me know.  And if you want to make your own loom so it is clear what you are talking about, feel free to email that to us at help@ownerrez.com

Hope that helps and hope you have a great day!

-Steve

A booking email history "feedback" used to show when the email was opened. Now, it's not. Why?

This has happened to me recently as well. There is no error that appears on my end -- it just doesn't send. 

I have issues responding to messages using the mobile version on my iPhone 14. I can type but the send button won't work. I either have to close/reopen or go to my computer.

I think it happens more often when I'm responding to an incoming message.

Next time it happens I'll try to screen record but curious if anyone else has a similar problem.

Hi Dan!

Can you please submit a ticket by writing to help@ownerrez.com? When writing in, please let us know which widget you're attempting to add the code to so we can take a look. 

Existing early bird and last-minute discounts should automatically convert into Vrbo “promos,” giving them the strike-through pricing on listings.

In addition to that, the new promotions will include:

• Mobile promos (targeted to mobile users)
• One Key member promos (for Expedia Group loyalty members)

Other promo types are already covered:

• New listing promo is supported through existing listing functionality.
• Length-of-stay discounts (weekly and monthly) already trigger the strike-through pricing automatically.

Vrbo says that only one promo can be applied at a time, and the one with the deepest discount will be applied.

Stacking:

Standard discounts should not stack on Airbnb, so you don’t need to add any additional conditions there.

For Vrbo, however both a Length of Stay (LOS) discount and a Last Minute discount can sync at the same time. To prevent stacking, set up a standard Last Minute discount for Vrbo, and then use a custom LOS discount with a date restriction.

For example, if your Last Minute discount applies to bookings made within 14 days of arrival, you can add a condition to your LOS discount such as:

“Booking date is more than 14 days before arrival.”

This ensures the LOS discount will never apply to bookings that qualify for the Last Minute discount, preventing accidental stacking on Vrbo.

I am incorporating the new VRBO OneKey and Moblie discounts, but I wanted to make sure these discounts were NOT going to stack with each other if a OneKey member booked via mobile? I also want to make sure that they don't stack with Early Bird and Last Minute discounts. I would like to only offer one discount and make sure they don't  all stack. Does anyone know if this is possible and if so how do I avoid multiple discounts being added?

When you connect to Vrbo through their API, Vrbo treats you like a professional partner: they show your listing, but all booking details are handled on your side. However, Vrbo works hard to keep guest communication inside their system to prevent off-platform bookings.

Because of this:

• Vrbo inquiries cannot be turned into bookings. Guests can only book after the inquiry stage is finished.

• The Quote and Pre-Approve buttons in your Vrbo dashboard do not work.

• When an inquiry imports into OwnerRez, it may look like you can send a quote or change charges, but guests cannot accept that quote. Vrbo blocks links that would allow it to turn into a booking.

Ways to adjust pricing for a Vrbo guest

Important: Vrbo’s ~15% guest fee does not go down even if you lower the price later in OwnerRez.

1. Discuss and Refund

You and the guest agree on a price through the Vrbo inbox.
They book at the normal price, and you refund the difference afterward.
Downsides: Guests may hesitate, and you might pay refund processing fees depending on your payment processor.

2. Adjust Rates and Min Nights

You and the guest agree on a price.
You temporarily change your rates/min nights for those dates, wait for Vrbo to sync (10–15 minutes), and the guest books right away.
Risks:

• Anyone could book at that lowered rate.

• Dynamic pricing tools may overwrite your manual changes on the next sync.

• Requires both you and the guest to act fast.

3. Instant Book Trick

If you use Instant Book, you can temporarily change your rules so bookings go into a “pending” status.
This gives you a moment to adjust the price before confirming.
Then switch your rules back to normal.