Feature Requests

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I just had a consultation with VRBO and he said that they now have seasonal cancellation. Does this need to be set in OwnerRez? If so, then how?

It'd be great if an affiliate / Referral marketing integration was possible. I've been checking a couple of software providers and all I tried connect to Stripe, however, since the booking is completed on OR hosted page (not on our own websites) ı'm not sure if they these tools can really track who referred the customer who completed the booking. There is a thank you page possibility but I think the redirection to this page after 20 seconds meaning that if the customer closes the browser before 20 seconds, s/he will not be redirected to thank you page. Wonder if anyone else is using a affiliate / referral software? Any solution ideas for keeping a prefect track of the conversions (bookings completed)?

[This topic has been closed as a duplicate of another topic (Levels of Team Access Permissions)]

[Another topic was closed as a duplicate of this topic (User Access authorities)]

this request is 3 years old now... would be such a nice feature especially since would could use Auto Tagging now as well if we could trigger based on reviews!

This is badly needed and one of the functions I miss from my old PMS.  I want to run a trigger based on a 5 star review, but no review triggers are available as best I can figure.

It seems like a manual option in the guest record then a simple flag for any guest that comes through with same or very similar parameters (i.e. name, email, phone number, address, etc.) would be very simple to implement. Host/owner can determine on their own if they want to force cancel the booking, or not accept. 

Yeah I know. I currently use the Pricelabs one. I just saw this new one had appeared and wondered if anyone else had heard of them.

This is really interesting. Did you notice any boosts in booking? Are you still continuing with this strategy?

We currently integrate with a slew of other dynamic pricing tools, you can read more about those here: https://www.ownerrez.com/integrations#DynamicPricing

Anyone heard of Smartpricing?

https://www.smartpricing.it/en

I spotted them the other day and the information they have looks good so far but as soon as I realised there was no OR integration I stopped researching.

They've got some nice free resources to use as well.

Thank you for all your insight.

I just want to be able to send someone who is celebrating an anniversary a reminder in about 10 months to plan their next anniversary.

All your suggestions sound doable.

It's cleaner for OwnerRez to be able to say "no, we just don't allow automatic emails like that at all".

... this would be more complicated than it might at first appear.

No... It's EASIER for OwnerRez to be able to say "no, we just don't allow automatic emails like that at all".

"... this would be more complicated than it might at first appear."

It is actually not as complicated as it might first appear. It would be very easy to restrict later messages to a particular template format ie, they include the following attributes or they won't be sent:

1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. (This is all automatic.)
2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. (Explain the requirements to your users. If they violate them - they only way you'll know is if you get a complaint, because it is all complaint driven, and complaints can be through a mandatory form link included in the template - they lose their access to the feature. You control access to various features of OwnerRez based on the user subscription, so the mechanisms for this are already in place.)
3. Identify the message as an ad. (Built into the template.)
4. Tell recipients where you’re located. (Built into the template.)
5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future marketing email from you. (Built into the template.)
6. Remember that subscribers and members can opt out of marketing emails, too.
7. Honor opt-out requests promptly. (When the guest opts out, it changes or assigns a mandatory tag [without user intervention or ability to change it] on the booking and future emails aren't sent.)

You can read the details here: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

REALLY... this is NOT onerous, and could be built into Templates made specifically for the purpose by OwnerRez, whereby the email being sent uses the "post 30-day" template or it doesn't go out. The trigger could be mandatorily booking related so emails are only sent once per booking, which eliminates 'mass' messaging.

It is actually not that hard to meet these requirements.

Considering all of the 'dancing' OwnerRez programmers do to meet the requirements of the big listing sites, this is a piece of cake by comparison. Whether you can do it is not a question.

It is a matter of will, and the desire to put your customer's needs first, that determines if this happens or not.

Not even allowing your users to vote for this feature and give you an honest indication of the desire for it is very bad form. You can't claim to put your customers first when you refuse to even listen to them about a topic and gauge their desire for something. At least you could be finding out in an honest manner how much desire there is for such a feature. That's not the same as agreeing to do it.

I am also interested in any potential future advancements in this area.  Guest replies to SMS text messages coming right to our cell phone would help us reply to guests in a timely manner, especially when it’s an opportunity for service recovery.  

we had originally setup email filtering rules to automatically forward applicable emails to our Verizon cell numbers (##########@vtext.com) which initially worked great.  We have been noticing very long delays recently in receiving the text, sometimes as long as 24 hours.  When discussing with Verizon, they let us know the @vtext.com service is being discontinued so we should not expect any improvements.  

we did setup the OwnerRez push notifications that are helpful, but it would be ideal to either be able to customize the push notification sounds or being able to receive an SMS text.  With an SMS text, we can customize the notification sound to be unique and loud to get our attention and respond promptly.  

Any future advancements in this area would be greatly appreciated!

Ryan

100% agree Robert. I simply don't understand why this isn't a working function in OR.

I think it's because the powers that be are too focused on integrations and not on making simply good software that functions independently of the tune listing sites force them to play.

I've literally had OwnerRez support staff laugh at the idea that guests don't know what they want and that we should easily be able to provide them with options. Then they went on to tell me that the 'OwnerRez' process (which they genuinely believed was better) was to make the guest go backwards through the sale cycle and submit additional requests for various alternatives that they may want.

How can they do that when they don't know what the alternatives are, and we've done nothing to inform them of them?

I would like OwnerRez to be able to calculate and quote minimum charges, rather than offer to tell guests it's a 'violation'.

This is best explained by example:

If I have a minimum night stay for a holiday season of 7 nights/1 week, I'm still perfectly happy to accept a 5 or 6 night booking for that period, as long as the guest pays for the full 7 nights. And during holiday seasons, for example, guests are perfectly happy to pay the higher total rate to get the nights they want, so it's a win-win.

OwnerRez flags inquiries and asks if I want to tell guests about the 'violation', which is truly unhelpful. Guests don't care about my 'rules' or the weakness of my quoting software. My old PMS simply applied the charge for the minimum number of nights applicable for the period, and flagged the quote to make me aware that the minimum nights charge was being applied.

And I could then adjust the quote, alert the guest, or do whatever I wanted to about it.

What I would most often do is send along an additional quote which shows the same charge, but for the minimum number of nights the guest would be paying for, along with an explanation, giving the guest the opportunity to book the longer stay and get a better value if they wanted.

But OwnerRez doesn't make that easy to do either. Everything is a hassle when it comes to quoting in OwnerRez, except for providing one single quote based on what the guest asked for (and even that isn't easy if it doesn't come in through an integration), as if the guest has enough expertise to know what all of their options/choices are and select amongst them before contacting me.

A much better approach is providing the host with lots of options to quote the guest, and making it easy to send those multiple options to the guest in a way that is easy for the guest to understand and select one amongst them. This is best for selling and marketing too. And having various options and choices available makes it easier to have the package/price point available that the guest will want, rather than giving them a one-size only single choice, which they must accept or reject.

Imagine going to a car dealership to find out about different vehicles and their options, and being told "We can only give you a price for one car, with one set of options, and you have to figure out first which one you want before we can give you a price for it." Meanwhile, the helpful dealership across the street is explaining the various models and options packages available for each of them, along with the price; quickly and efficiently when the customer contacts them. Whose going to be selling the most cars?

Could we please have this functionality improved based on my examples?

One way of doing that would have OwnerRez show me how much I SHOULD be charging the guest when the quote is created, and making it easy for me to adjust the quote if I want to. As things stand now, yes I can change the Charges, but what should I be changing them too?  No information is provided by the system. How much should the extra nights cost? Why doesn't the system show me that?

Another way would be if quotes could be easily duplicated and changed, with a comparison available to the original while the user is making those changes. Now, duplicating quotes is more like duplicating inquiries than quotes, with none of the reference information available when working on the duplicate.

And of course, the system needs to be able to easily send multiple quotes in the same email without jumping through a ridiculous number of hoops to do it.

This would be for cases where someone who originally booked on Airbnb wants to add an extra night at a discount. They would have been offered the discount via email trigger from OwnerRez.

What process should be followed to make it so OwnerRez trigger timings are updated? I'm not sure how to give them the discount in Airbnb when extending their stay so I just request the exact dollar amount in Airbnb and charge as extra services and then put a block in OwnerRez for that day.

Hey Scott & Christia,

What you're describing sounds a bit off, like there's something we should dig deeper on here. To the best of my knowledge, those triggers should adapt to the change of dates. Could I ask you to write this in to help@ownerrez.com with some example ORB#s so we can take a closer look?

If the change of dates took place after the trigger was already scheduled to fire, that could be why they still went out. We'd like to look at an affected booking directly to see what happened though.

Thanks!

When we have a guest accept our upsell offer to stay an extra night, it would be great if we could somehow update OwnerRez to adjust the timing of all message triggers (even if it needs to be done manually by us) so that the messages don't send at times that don't make sense.

i.e., the way it is now, if a guest decides to stay an extra night at the end of their original reservation, the farewell message sends the day before they actually leave

Please add this request!  It takes too much time to sort through all the gray message to find which ones say will be sent.  Definitely a yellow or amber color would make a ton of sense in your traffic light them of color coding.

I agree! This would be a great feature. I struggle with this too.

Would love to be able to retarget my gusts in a year after they stay.  I think it would add great value.  However, there is no guarantee that the past guest would rebook.  So, I don't want to spend money on mail chimp or anything else like that.

Since they have stayed with us, aren't they automatically opting in to us emailing them again?  What if we put something in our rental agreement that says you agree to receive marketing in the future.  Would that suffice?

I'm not sure why a trigger is limited to no more than 30 days after check-out. I'd really like to send my guests some follow-up messages later than that, inviting them back and giving them a special offer. Can you not let us create further-out triggers?

I too would love to retarget past guests.  If I have a guest that is celebrating an anniversary, I would like to send them something in about 10 months asking them if it's time to get away again for another anniversary celebration.  Or just send them a happy anniversary email a year after they stay.

If you find the registered mark on a symbol copier site and copy it, you can paste it into the description.

Here's an example -- you should be able to select this, copy, and then paste into the description:

®

Note that many listing sites strip out symbols, so it may not go through to the listing site, depending on how they handle symbols.

One other thing you can do is use parens to form the circle, like (r) -- that's not a separate symbol so should go through everywhere.

Trademarks are suppose to be in all business advetisements where the initial company name appears. 
The trademark symbol can’t be placed in the description on Ownerrez  

We need to be able to copy and paste the R surrounded in a circle trademark symbol.

The engineer at Ownerrez said it is not possible at this time. 

Thank you! 

INBOX - In the short time I have used SMS and the INBOX I have had the need to find a message and if the ability to search for a string would be great..

It handles single-lock properties just fine — it’s only when there are multiple locks at a property (front/back doors) where it gets clunky. I’m assuming yours that you’re referring to is a property with only one lock?

I would look at your settings. I have Schlage and it sends the door code, but doesn't include the lock name.  Mine looks just like your second message.

Shawn, I think this suggestion merits some re-evaluation.  There seems to be 2 common issues with SMS. 1) Sending an SMS to a non-valid number which hopefully then generates a bounce, and 2) An inbound message from a guest or other user TO the registered 10-Digit Number of an OR account (the 10DLC / Long Code).  

Under #1, which is what this user suggested occurs - then OR be able to send an EMAIL message in only 1 time when a bounce occurs.  Under this situation, an infinite look is not possible.  This ideally would be put in place whereas an "alternate trigger" when a bounce occurs.  For example, Send Door Code via SMS, If Fails, then Send Door Code via Email. 

Under #2, it would be very helpful, if a third part (guest or other) send an SMS to a registered OR user account (10DLC / Long Code) an auto-reply message be sent back as an option - so the guest could be reminded hot to get support (rather than sending unreliable messages to the OR user account via the Long Code.

I won’t name any other PMS or software because Owner Rez support seems to remove my posts if they mention anything else by name and I don’t want this thread to get taken down. But basically every other PMS I am aware of has this functionality. It’s absolutely vital. I changed from one to Owner Rez and shopped around a lot of platforms. This is such a basic feature I didn’t even think to look if OR had it. I was flabbergasted when I went to make my final changes from one PMS to OR with regards to messaging and I couldn’t. So now I have been stuck for 6 months paying for 2 PMS because I can’t just leave behind my staffs access to messaging and I refuse to give them access to everything in the business.