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Hello there Roman,

At this moment, I am using Airbnb & VRBO, with most of the bookings coming from Airbnb as that is what everyone in Panama is more familiar with.  It seems that the bookings have dropped off and September is very quiet for us, most likely due to the economic climate. What is your experience? 

You can certainly be on on VRBO!  Sure, you have a different target market to us but you never know where you are going to pick up business.  Lots of Americans love to go to Costa Rica and are looking for everything from small, keenly priced places to stay to large and expensive accommodation.  Just be aware that VRBO have a higher host fee (8%).  You can also connect VRBO with ical, but I use the API to connect Airbnb with OR.  It works well. 

And how about Booking.com? What is your experience with that platform and where are your customers coming from?

I was considering putting our property on there, but the fees are very high and I have seen so many negative comments about guests cancelling, as they do for hotels, that I am wondering if it is worth the effort and aggravation.

 

Let me know, Roman, please.

 

Thanks

Suzy, Villa Ibis, Buenaventura, Panama

 

Suzy

 

thank you for the information. I will look these companies up. 

 

What other OTA are you using? I am currently only using Bookings.com and Airbnb. with Airbnb only connected via iCal. I see you are using VRBO as well. I have not connected my properties yet to this OTA. My price points do not seem to fit. Do you think it's worth the effort for an 80USD per night tiny house?

Suzy,

thank you for the information. I will look these companies up. 

What other OTA are you using? I am currently only using Bookings.com and Airbnb. with Airbnb only connected via iCal. I see you are using VRBO as well. I have not connected my properties yet to this OTA. My price points do not seem to fit. Do you think it's worth the effort for an 80USD per night tiny house?

Hi there Roman,

I'm Suzy next door to you in Panama. Nice to meet you and good luck with your direct business. If it's of interest, here is my vacation rental.  https://www.villaibisbuenaventura.com/

The option I'm using right now for direct booking payments is Paguelofacil (not sure if that is just Panama or Costa Rica as well) but there is also Cuanto https://web.cuanto.app/en. (also not sure if it's just Panama).  These are not payment gateways as such and there is no direct integration into Owner Rez meaning it's kind of long winded as it's not automated, but right now, seems to be the only option other than a Paypal merchant account (expensive).

Best wishes,

Suzy 

I have a guest who booked on Airbnb, and I offered her an extra night half off, to fill in the night. She accepted. I sent her a booking request from OR as I didn't know how to extend her night on Airbnb. It looks like since she accepted, it's kicked her off of Airbnb and says she booked from my website.  My issue now, is I'm afraid the system is going to shut off her door code at 11a tomorrow as that was when her 1st booking was supposed to end. I've tried changing the booking to extend, but the system keeps telling me there is a conflict with another booking.. Which is her booking for the extra night. Is there a work around this, to override the system?  She's also getting all the trigger emails since the system is seeing her as a new booking. 

Felicia 

Hi all,

New to OwnerRez but not new to Property Management.  Came from Lodgable channel manager and must say I'm so impressed by the documentation and support I've seen at OwnerRez.  I spent the whole trial setting up the system and have pretty much everything buttoned up now.  We have 2 of our own properties and are interested in branching out to manager other properties as well. 

I come from an IT background and do PHP development so I've been digging into the API quite a bit.  Looking forward to contributing to the developer community here!

Actually, i think the best bet is BAC 

https://www2.baccredomatic.com/es-cr/comercios-afiliados/herramientas-aceptar-pagos/e-commerce

the big issue is they charge 100USD per month for their eCommerce integration. The good news is that they cover a lot of different countries in Central America.. so figure out how to integrate one country it may be just a copy and past after that.

This is actually an ongoing issue that comes up from time to time - at present, we aren't aware of any of our banking partners that operate in Costa Rica.

Due to the number of Costa Rican clients we have, though, we'd be interested in talking with a suitable bank that operates there, to see if we can integrate with them as we do with many others.  Naturally, a larger bank would be preferable, particularly if it covers multiple countries in the region.

Any suggestions or contacts we should reach out to?

New to the Channel manger,

Does anybody here has properties in Costa Rica.. i been booking exclusively on Airbnb. and have decided to make the change to multiple OTAs.. not 100% set up.. but was wondering what other Costa Rican clients use for payment gateways. 

www.bambooriver.house

any help or advice would be great. 

Regards,

RJ

I have sync'd the calendar, and I am working to make sure all the I's are dotted and T's are cross before I complete the API. Any recommendations on OTC drugs to get the nerve just to do it? ha ha

Hi Debbie–your place looks like a lot of fun. Best of luck, Susan

Hello Y'all!  My husband and I do things a little different than the rest.  He builds treehouses, hobbit houses, tiny houses and A Frames.  We rent UTVs to explore the 40 acres of forest where we created scavenger hunts hidden for the explorer to enjoy!  Adventurecreekranch.com is where it happens! 

Thanks for explaining the use case.  I understand the problem now.  We debated this internally a bit, and unfortunately we don't see any way that you can charge a top-up (or prepaid) card for an additional amount beyond what you initially charged.  Really, it would depend on the limits of the card itself - how much was on it, does it allow multiple transactions, and so on.  They very greatly based on who issues them and whether they have fin-tech coding as part of them.

Hi Paul,

Thank you for your reply!

In our case (I think it'll be unusual for many here), we mainly rely on 20% deposit payment and we don't collect the 80% until the guest arrives. Cancellation fees are higher than the 20% deposit.

I know this process will sound strange but we'd like to keep this. Therefore my question about not allowing toğ-up credit cards is still valid. Is there any way of doing it?

Hi Tarki, can you refund a smaller amount instead of trying to collect a new payment?  Perhaps that's what you already tried, but typically when there's a cancellation penalty, it's collected by simply refunding a smaller amount from what the guest originally paid.

Hello there,

We sometimes can not collect the cancellation penalty due to top-up credit cards being used for bookings. Is there any possibility to stop these type of cards being accepted? or maybe making it optional (to accept or not) on the account, so the account owner decides what to do?

Hi, glad to have you here! You may find this general setup checklist helpful:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/setup-checklist

Hello everyone,

I have never used a PMS or channel manager before or even a credit card processor
My properties are mostly in Sao Paulo - Brazil
I am on the free trial version still but I liked what I found so far
Main reason for me to look into OR was the fact that I could possible streamline the operations btw the OTAs, having my own booking page and see all of that on QuickBooks.
I also like the idea to send a rental agreement to the guests

I in the process of pocking around and figure it out how to properly add my property and sync calendars and information

Thanks

Great to have you here! I'm sure you'll find many useful resources in this Forum and other parts of the site. Best of luck to you as you move forward!

Hello all,

I'm starting my own vacation rental business down in Baja California Sur, Mexico. I'm pretty new to the rental business and decided on ownerresevations.com after much research as well as all the great reviews it has received from friends in the rental business. Excited to be here and on this learning journey.

Hello, and welcome to OwnerRez!

The tiny homes sound very interesting, that's a super cool opportunity!

I am a new user of OwnerRez and I just switched over from Lodgify and am so happy I have done so! I am a Chartered Accountant and Real Estate Investor and specialize in tiny homes and garden suites (also called ADU's or garage suites). I am excited to be adding two new tiny homes in Belize to my portfolio this month and it is so nice to have all my reviews along with all my financials in one place here on OwnerRez!

Hey everyone-

My wife and I are new to OwnerRez and just starting to get rolling. We bought our townhouse in West Dover, VT (Mount Snow) in September 2020 and until this month- used a local property manager to handle the AirBNB/VRBO listings for it.

After a watching to see how this worked, we decided it might be something that would make sense running ourselves. We are going to give OwnerRez a shot in order to be able to setup/automate AirBNB + VRBO + hosting a website for direct bookings.

It seems like a very active community of owners/users of OR, and we're looking forward to learning from all of you!

Thanks!
Will & Alycia Galway

Hello everyone.

I am new to Owner Rez. I have 2 properties which I manage myself.

I am trying to get up to speed listing these properties.

I am also trying to figure out a way to create a web listing of these properties. HELP.

Which forum is the one for new owners hoping to get up to speed very quickly.

Is there also a way to analyze my listing to see how it rates as compared to other listings in my community.

Glad to be here.

Keith

Hi Tonya,

Glad to have you aboard! Please feel free to write in to the Helpdesk if you run into questions that you can't find here in the Forums.

I manage 32 properties in PCB and have been doing "Old School" bookkeeping with Excel Sreadsheets. It's time for an update! I specifically want to make a website. I will be asking lots of questions! :)

I’m new and am converting my family cottage into a vacation rental. Due to my full time job, trying to automate with OR as much as possible. A new professional website is being developed but here’s something basic I made up on godaddy.com. Www.middlelakevacations.com

Pacific View Lodging operates 3 small boutique type motel properties (26 individual rental units) on the central and northern Oregon Coast. We actually found OR by accident after a failing implementation with another property management software. We are happy to say that within about 1 week from our initial inquiries and start that we were able to get all of our properties up and operation on the 3 major channels (Air/Booking/VRBO) and that we were able to hit the ground running with very little hiccup... Unlike the previous implementation where we were nearly 5 weeks in and still did not have operational channels. (Realize that this is probably not the norm and we spent a huge number of hours but we did so with just a little bit of assistance from support which says a whole lot about the software itself and it's ease of use and flexibility.

Support has been great to work with. We look forward to a long partnership with the team at OR.

We are very pleased with our experience with Owner Rez and the support we have received.
Our rental idea was conceived prior to Covid and ran behind our schedule of opening by almost 3 months.

Our rental is a passive solar home in a rural setting in the Ozark Plateau region of Arkansas. Our website
is www.stayozark.com

I have learned so much from reading online forums from seasoned owners and managers over the last 10
months. Thank you all.

Regards,
Mariette and David Spidel

Glad to have you and welcome!

Hello to all on OR. I'm a newbie on OR. Just got started and already love the feel, look and ease of everything. The videos and step-by-step instructions and support has been great. Our home is in South Oceanside, California. Looking forward to getting rolling!