Feature Requests

Sort by

• Newest Reply
• Newest Topic

Our Custom Cancellation Policies integrate with Vrbo, so are limited to what they support - and they don't.  We have asked them for this as well as some other additional customization options, and will implement them as soon as they allow, but, I wouldn't anticipate that happening in the near future.

Has this option ever been added? 

I've suggested this to Airbnb also but I don't know if I'll ever hear from that black hole..lol. Anyway, I would love to have separate cancellation policies for our high season here in FL and for the off season. In high season I have a strict cancellation policy but I'd like to be more flexible in the off season so I can cater to business travelers. Any plans in the works for us to be able to set parameters for different cancellation policies based on the time of year? 

I have two properties listed at BDC. Property A was verified right away. Property B is still in the probationary stage. (It is a mystery why A was verified so quickly and B was not -- no one at BDC seems to be able to answer that.)

What this means is that for verified Property A, BDC collects the payment and then sends the payout to me the morning after the arrival, ala AirBnB. This seems to work fine. 

For Property B, BDC does NOT collect the payment -- because I am not yet verified. Yet, because I am not yet verified, BDC will not share the credit card info with me for bookings related to this property. Their advice is to collect the payment directly from the guest upon arrival. 

So now I must send payment requests from OR directly to my Property B guests, but not my Property A guests.

I would love for this to be automatic, but the issue is that the OR settings apply to the entire BDC channel -- not to my individual properties. For example, my OR Credit Card Payment Mode is set to "Automatic" which works for Property A, but it really should be set to "Manual" for Property B. 

So my feature request is to make channel settings assignable to each individual property on Booking.com rather than to the channel itself. 

Any advice on how to deal with this moving forward? I suppose the only thing I can do is set up an invoice trigger for Property B bookings until I am verified for Property B?

As an aside for anyone contemplating ramping up on BDC... I am getting exhausted by this platform's problems far outweighing the return. Their verification process is mysterious and undefined; their tax rates have been incorrect and difficult to change since day one; the interface is not intuitive and downright misleading; the guests seem to cancel at a much higher rate than other platforms... I may not be long for this platform. 

Yes, this is planned for the future.

I would love this! I use tags for if guests have added the hot tub, sleeper sofa, etc.  I would love to be able to add details to the e-mail, based on the tags they've selected!

I think there is a work-around, but it requires 7 triggers. I haven't implemented this but it should work. Maybe an OR member can confirm the logic works in Triggers?

For a Sunday reminder (adjust for other days)

Action:

At scheduled time, 0 days after booking arrives (time should be AFTER check-in)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Sunday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

Action:

At scheduled time, 6 days after booking arrives (set to any time you want)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Monday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

Action: At scheduled time, 5 days after booking arrives (set to any time you want)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Tuesday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

Action: At scheduled time, 4 days after booking arrives (set to any time you want)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Wednesday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

Action:

At scheduled time, 3 days after booking arrives (set to any time you want)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Thursday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

Action:

At scheduled time, 2 days after booking arrives (set to any time you want)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Friday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

Action:

At scheduled time, 1 day after booking arrives (set to any time you want)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Saturday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

----------

For a Monday reminder:

Action:

At scheduled time, 0 days after booking arrives (time should be AFTER check-in)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Monday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

Action:

At scheduled time, 6 days after booking arrives (set to any time you want)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Tuesday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

Action: At scheduled time, 5 days after booking arrives (set to any time you want)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Wednesday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

Action: At scheduled time, 4 days after booking arrives (set to any time you want)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Thurssday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

Action:

At scheduled time, 3 days after booking arrives (set to any time you want)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Friday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

Action:

At scheduled time, 2 days after booking arrives (set to any time you want)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Saturday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

Action:

At scheduled time, 1 day after booking arrives (set to any time you want)

Booking Fields:

Arrival Day of the week is Sunday

Departure Days from Now is Greater Than or Equal to 1

Think this is super useful trying to manage your homes from one place is the trick and the dropbox and other places is hard if you have to also be able to update and send owners the information and have proof they have been made aware. 

Or example legal regulations in tahoe, they state we have to send specific details our like fire escape routes for cars etc so finding that we are send files and information so much via email and can't track it in the tool that we should or would like to. 

As the laws change also having the licenses and everything in one place is just the right thing and guessing more and more will be required.  Could also alert on expiry dates... 

Maybe a legal section in each house this might be a great first step could have links to third-party stores also such as dropbox or one drive etc. 

License Number:   Expiry Date  Cert Number XXXXXXX   upload or link to store 

Fire Ex Cert

Fire Safety Cert

Insurance 

Liability Insurance

Pool Safety Cert 

Haven't found a way to do this yet: Triggers only seem to work with bookings. 

Automatically follow up on a quote or inquiry have a trigger that allows for an automatic message template or something to be sent depending on the time etc. after an inquiry or quote has been placed to follow up with the potential guest. 

This would be so good to have as we find we are having to do this manually and has great rate of converting quotes and inquiries to bookings. 

Booking Month View I find really useful to see upcoming availability and current guests.  It would be much better if daily rates were easily visible (if can enable for multiple properties at the same time even better) AND if there was a small icon next to the guest name indicating booking platform site (e.g. Airbnb/VRBO/direct booking).

Yes please, I would like to see this as well.

This was released at the end of 2021 but we didn't get it marked as released, so better late than never!

This is being worked on in conjunction with https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/requests/different-titles, so stay tuned!

-Shawn

Hi Chuck! We're presently doing some work around this. We hope to have something out by end of 3rd quarter of the calendar year at the latest!

-Shawn

Preempted Quote (no Send link up top):

Open Quote (Send link up top):

So when a quote is preempted by someone else booking, the Send link is gone. So there's no way to send a message to the person who waited too long to book to let them know their quote is no longer valid. They just get the preempted screen if they try to access it again. I guess I was looking for a proactive way to send a message to a guest from the quote (or a quote-based trigger would be even better) when their quote has been preempted. Thanks!

Not sure what exactly you're looking for here?

I totally agree with you Sandra.  Email marketing (done right) absolutely, positively works!  

I’m not talking about sending out so many emails that people drown in emails (hey I hate that too) but friendly occasional emails that basically just say hi and remind people a/ you’re still there and b/ you remember them, go down well with people. 

 I have people thank me for my emails and touching base with them.  Emails  allow me a great way to build/continue relationships with guests and if people dont want to get the emails ( whether that’s because they’re not interested any more, receiving the emails annoys them or their inbox is just too full) they can easily and painlessly unsubscribe.  

I have nearly 3000 people on my mailchimp account who are all happy to receive my occasional emails (as a one person operator these get sent out ‘occasionally’ when I have time/remember/have something to let people know/wanting to fill a vacancy/have the brain space above everything else to write one and send out).

One day I’ll get organised enough to send out a regular (monthly?) email to these people above the occasionals I do now too

Oh yes, and a direct integration with zapier would make my business admin much easier and owner Rez a much superior product - allowing me to ‘fill in the gaps’ myself with tweaks OR doesn’t provide.  OR is good now,a zapier integration would make it great.

As a long time user of OR I know Zapier integration has been a feature that has been requested many times and for a long time by OR users. 

Can we have a Send Without Quote (or at least the Send) link back for Preempted quotes? Or a trigger for a Quote message template to let guests know when their quote has been preempted by a booking from another guest? Thanks! (I can't figure out how to email a guest whose quote has been preempted, even manually!)

I am listed on Vrbo, BDC, local tourism site, GMB, HTG, of course, my own website, FB, IG. 

Do not know what works in Punta Cana. But like most everywhere, here in the Smoky Mountains, we have high seasons and low seasons. But we are year-round destination so properties book albeit at rates corresponding to the season. With 15K+ vacation rentals in the area, and every minor and major property management company, tourist bureau, attraction etc peppering visitors with emails, I just do not see them as effective. 

 besides spending $500/year per listing on vrbo, I no longer pay for any marketing. 

• FB ads - do not work any longer bc since 2019 FB does not allow "targeting" as it for some reason considers VRs "housing", and thinks that targeting ads to women 35-65 years of age living in certain states is "discrimination" (that is demographic that does most bookings). So no longer spend money on that (never did much).
• Same for IG, that is completely useless. May be different for people selling cheap costume jewelry but not VRs. 
• GMB - I make posts/updates. It is free. 
• Occasional youtube clip - Free. 
• Local tourism site (pretty robust) - free to list if you pay lodging tax (which of course I do).
• BDC - free to list.
• Blog on my website - free and my time. 
• Posting in FB VR groups - free and my time. 

That's about it. So my marketing budget is $1000+/year. I just do not see where more advert money can be spent with any kind of effect. 

The ability to delete multiple inquiries at once from the list would be very helpful, especially in these situations. (see attached photo)

Amen Chris.

(My previous message was supposed to be a reply to Ken T -- I apparently forgot to quote his message in my reply, and trying to edit the post now is giving me a "page not found" error.)

Personally, I'm 100% with you -- I get gobs of marketing emails from companies every day and never pay attention to them (every now and then, I get so frustrated that I start opening every email I received over the last week and hunting for the Unsubscribe link just to try to stem the tide, and I often conduct searches on Priceline/Kayak/Expedia/Airbnb/Vrbo/etc. in Incognito mode just to avoid the ubiquitous "Did you forget to finish booking your Istanbul trip?" emails that come a day later. Marketing emails are largely useless (and occasionally annoying) background noise to me.

But that isn't the case for everyone. In my day job (also travel, but not STR), I oversee our email marketing operations. We send to about 150K subscribers every week. Our open rate ranges from 20-40%, depending on various factors (from season to subject line) and a click rate of between 5-10%. On "newsletter day," our booking volume skyrockets by about 20-30%, largely due to the clicks from the newsletter. We try to put useful content in the newsletter but ultimately it's just a vehicle to kind of "remind" people we exist and to use us as they plan their next trip. And it works! About half the clicks are to the blog articles or other resources we link to in our newsletter, but the other half are just clicks on the header logo or link to our homepage, where people can run a search for our product and make a booking. I'm shocked every week how much the newsletter (sent to the same people 52 times a year) puts us front-of-mind enough to meaningfully drive volume to our site.

My point is that different people process information differently, and the statistics show that email marketing/remarketing DOES objectively work. We (and by that I mean we who operate businesses in the e-commerce sector of all stripes) must be careful not to project our own preferences and tendencies and personalities on our operations and products but rather let the data drive decision-making, and in this case, the data says that email marketing IS not only useful but hugely so.

Totally get that. I was just picturing a ten second delay or something like my Gmail but I understand the negative side as well. Thanks for such a quick reply!

Well, this is the flipside of OwnerRez trying to do everything in realtime that it can... there's not much if any time for an "undo" button to catch an error before the message is out flying across the Internet beyond the ability to recall.  So I doubt a feature like this would be possible, at least not without intentionally delaying and slowing down all message-sending which probably wouldn't be very popular.

What I'm doing right now on my site, is manually uploading them and connecting them to the review (custom-built ACF solution).  Wouldn't object to doing this on OR.

Unfortunately, Airbnb provides no official API method to bring in guest photos.  At present, Channel Bridge can do this, but this is dependent on an unofficial approach and may be restricted by Airbnb at any time.

Hi Ken,

I'm more interested in having this when the guests leave a review through OR.  I like to use the images on my site.

If you rent year-round then you have no need for email marketing. Whatever you are doing is working.

With all due respect just because no one opens your emails does not mean email marketing doesn't work.

I have over an 80% open rate.

Let me finish with this.

Email marketing is not for everyone or every business. We may be in the same vacation rental business but our markets are completely different.

My rentals are in another country. Managing property overseas has its own unique set of challenges. What works for me does not necessarily work for you. Email marketing is a tactic I use to fill the slow season in Punta Cana. It works for me. Every vacation rental business has its own unique challenges and target market which can vary widely.

As I said in an earlier post. Email marketing generates business for me in an otherwise very slow season. July, August and September can be very slow. Email marketing is one of a few marketing tactics I use to fill rentals in this slow time. 

Don't make the mistake of thinking because it doesn't work for you that it doesn't work.

In the end, you have to find what works for your vacation rental business.

I'm in marketing, it's what I do for a living.

Lastly, you say you don't offer discounts. Do you spend money on marketing? Or do you post your listings on Airbnb and VRBO and hope for the best?

Offering discounts is part of my marketing plan and budget. It's the cost of doing business and it works. I can take the money I discount and apply it towards marketing or just offer a discount. In the end, for me, it's all marketing expenses.

The business world is all about supply and demand. That's why two people sitting on the same airline flight most likely paid two different prices. As the demand goes up so goes the cost and as supply goes down so too goes the cost. This is how airlines make money. And quite frankly, it's how I also make money.

You honestly can't compare my market with your market. 

That are some times when I send an email or airbnb message through Ownerrez and quickly realize I made a mistake, lol. An undo button would be cool in order to stop the message from being sent if it's still in the queue.