we use tags to filter out people we dont want future messaging to go to, but we have no current way to block someone with a "negative" tag from booking.
While not 100% effective... we tag the guest... and then have the system send to us a notification at time of booking if someone books that has been tagged. We of course keep all of the "history" with the guest and have not problem cancelling their reservation explaining the past history to them if needed. I would like to see this automated for direct bookings for sure by preventing them from confirming based on the guest information they provided... additionally, I don't know when you actually get the guest information from the OTAs but if when the inquiry comes in there are matches to a guest that is tagged I would think you could respond back to the inquiry with an appropriate booking violation response.
I just tag the guest as "bad guest" then eliminate those tagged guests from my data set.
It's just amazing that I can't block a guest by email address. Yes, I am well aware that a determined guest can spin up a temporary email address. But most can't or won't. With effort any limitation can be circumvented. "It won't be perfect" is a ridiculous reason to not go forward with solving this problem for most cases.
I do agree... most people wont take the time. Unfortunately the channels do not give us email addresses in many cases until after booked or if at all so you will still need a process to manage them. We fortunately do not have too much problem and where we do we clearly let the guests know that they are not welcome back to any of our properties... we have only had a handful that have tried and we just cancel them when we get our automated message that a guest flagged as bad has booked.
We honestly have not had problems with this scenario. Sure we get some bad guests but far and away, these guests travel from distant locations and never return.
Email addresses can be spoofed easily and like many said, OTAs don't even forward private email addresses.
Perhaps it would be better to be able to block by requiring a government photo id to be uploaded in order to remove the booking pending status as a pre-check-in requirement. Then use AI to scan the photo id to look for matches of previously banned guests.
Set up an automation like:
When: Guest Record Is updated;
Action: Set {Booking Status} to "Cancelled" and provide full refund;
If: {AI-photoidscan_OCR_results} contains text string "Jerko Bonebrain" or "654 Bonehead Avenue, Loserville, AR"
Or: {AI-photoidscan_facialrecognition} matches any {guest_photo_id} which is tagged "Banned"
Those 2 items would have to be AI generated results fields, which currently do not exist in OR, that have the ability to scan uploaded government IDs.
It's going to be impossible to stop everyone but for the most part this will filter out a few more. (Government IDs can be faked too.)
This wouldn't stop guests who booked in the past before you began asking guests to send a photo ID but it will stop any future guests who have sent you a government ID.
And if they refuse to send you a government ID, you can assume they have something in their background you might not want to host anyhow.
That might be using a broad brush to paint but that's up to you.
The Banned Guest feature for direct bookings is now available! You can read about it here - https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/banned-guests
Thanks for your patience, everyone.
This is awesome, Bri! Thank you!
