Feature Requests

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Yeah...I get these alerts. I was thinking about sending an explicit email that says 'make sure to update the calendar in the other site'. Just trying to figure out how to quadruple check that I don't get double bookings...

Hmm. You should get owner notifications when bookings are changed or canceled, whether manually or by the iCal import. Are those coming through? Or are you wanting notifications to another person? What about setting up third party alerts? Those also go out when a booking is created, changed, or canceled.

We use a third party provider as another sales channel. We have to manually update their calendar when we get a booking or a booking is cancelled and we've had a few misses almost resulting in double bookings.

We just need extra reminders....so wondering if it's possible to add a reminder trigger for when a booking is cancelled or blocked off time is removed from an iCal import?

We don't have customizeable reports yet, but you can get what you want from the bookings list export. If you go to the Bookings tab and go to List view, there's an Export button there. That'll give you the full dump which includes all of the columns you mentioned.

Does that work?

Yep! This is something that would be very useful in a lot of ways.

For an initial version, we're thinking to add this as another way to add discounts, like we have for add-ons. Create a discount, enter a code that triggers it. Add a discount code area on the first quote page where you also pick addons.

I think the tough rule there is what about multiple discounts, particularly if some are built in and some are on codes? Do you let them stack or pick the greatest discount? For starters the best thing is probably to only allow the greatest discount to apply when a code is entered.

Can I add my vote for this? I'd like to be able to offer my repeat guests a 10% discount and let them book automatically through my site (I think it tends to maximize conversions if I make it easy for them to do it themselves rather than have to submit an inquiry and wait for me to respond).

Ideally, the feature would be flexible and could offer:

-A percentage discount
-A flat dollar figure
-A flat dollar-off per night (i.e. $10 off per night)
-Change rate to a specific rate (i.e. coupon 99SPECIAL for $99/night)
-Reducing or waiving a designated fee (i.e. waive the cleaning fee or a pet fee)
-Ability to set validity periods (blackout dates or available dates) and maybe some other tweaks, like minimum/maximum stays, including/excluding weekends, etc.)

But I'd be happy with just a basic percentage discount for now! :)

Maybe this feature already exists and I just don't know it! But I would love to be able to run a customized report which includes the following:

Property
Guest name
Email address
Mobile phone
Arrival date
Departure date
# Guests
Total charges
Total paid
Balance Due

Right now, I download a couple of the existing reports and do some cutting and pasting to get this info on one spreadsheet. Would love if OwnerRez could do it for me!

Thanks for considering (or pointing me in right direction if currently available!).

Jackie

We just added this for you. Now you can use {BSOURCE} to pull the name of the listing site set on the booking in email templates and renter agreements.

Also added {ISOURCE} for inquiries.

Yep! As long as you populate it on the booking before the email goes out it'll be included.

#1 is a good idea. We have a to-do list item we're calling "payment schedules" that would allow creating that list of amounts and due dates rather than just the first and second payment as it is now. If you're using credit cards, you can sort of hack around that for now by scheduling payments on the booking -- you can make however many scheduled payments you want. But we're planning to officially support that so it shows up on the checkout and works for other payment types.

#2 if you're pushing it into a template, what about using a custom field on the booking? It wouldn't be on the charges page, but you would be able to populate it and use it in the template.

1. can be done pretty easily since OR already provides payment link. Offer "payment plan" i.e ability to split payments for reservation at least x months away into 3 payments or monthly, with a small 'convenience" fee , say $5, for each.

2. Ability to use a field in post departure email that reflects "service fee" guest paid to OTA. There is a field already where owner can record an OTA fee, I suppose could be re purposed, but not available to use in template. i want to be able to send something " Please remember to book direct next time! If you booked direct instead of booking via {VRBO, AIRBNB etc}, you would have saved yourself ${service fee amount}.

Thank you, better. Now if I could only get a real vrbo inquiry!

Thanks Chris. I happened to look at the searches for my listings on HA/VRBO yesterday and found that I had dropped from around top 100 to about 2000 of 2500 listings in Galveston. I called HA and they said it was because my ratio of bookings to inquiries was low. They thought that my content was fine but advised I should look at my competition to see what they are doing or saying in their listings that I'm not. The fact is that I send an OR quote to the prospective guest right after I send an HA quote so I think what's happening is that a lot of guests are seeing that my OR quotes are about $100 lower booking cost than HA (because of their admin fee and insurance) and the guests are gravitating to the lower cost quote from OR. So I'm going to try to just let those book thru HA to see if I can get higher on their search rankings. They are basically catering to the owner that has 1 or 2 properties that let's HA system do everything. I looked and have a lot nicer properties at similar or lower costs than much of the top 100. Guess we have to play the game their way or get struck out.

Great tips and email template!

HomeAway strips out a ton of formatting from the email in their effort to block all contact info. They basically convert everything to plain text, and their conversion algorithm can jumble stuff up.

I had a look at your email template and there was still some hidden formatting in there that might have been confusing the HA system. I stripped every last bit of formatting for you -- AVAILGEN template -- try again and let me know if it looks better this time.

I wonder if we should have a "plain text only" option on templates just for this sort of thing, something that doesn't include formatting at all.

Just created auto responder and tested with VRBO.

Noticed a few issues with how formatting is handled.
1. If you are using bullet points in your template, they do not carry forward and text becomes all merged together without line breaks
2. Changed bullet points to separate lines. better.
3. Some words get stuck together with no spaces even though there are spaces in the template. I think it happens around variable fields or fields with format (bold, highlight etc). Suggest adding extra space before each variable field and remove any formatting as it does not show in VRBO anyway. here is the sample with :


Thank you for considering Blue Mountain Lodge for your vacation stay.

The dates you are inquiring about areavailable. Please see information about renting our cabin: <<< see "are available" merged

~ Blue Mountain Lodge is a private vacation home, rented out by owners (not a management company or an agent).

~ NO smoking ~ NO pets ~ NO house parties

~ Must be at least 25 years of age to rent, and be present during the entire stay; No third party rentals. Minors under 18 can only stay with parent, legal guardian or responsible adult, and must never be left at the property unsupervised.

~ No occupancy above 12 persons (which includes adults and children ages 0 and up) at any time during the stay.

~ Property is not reserved in your name until deposit (or full balance) is paid and booking is accepted. Availability is real time and may change after this email is sent.

~ Rental Agreement signed by primary Guest and copy of valid photo ID are required if you decide to book. If the required is not returned within 72 hours from booking acceptance, we reserve the right to cancel your booking and issue a refund.

~ 60 day cancellation policy (full refund if reservation cancelled by renter 60 or more days before the scheduled check-in).

~ We recommend obtaining Trip Cancellation insurance for your tripif your stay isduring winter months,or if you are concerned about possible Cancellation. <<< see "trip if" and "is during" merged

~ The exact address, driving directions and check in instructions will be provided after balance is paid and few days prior to check in.

~ Check in is3:00 PM ET and check out is 10:00 AM ET unless pre-arranged otherwise with the Owner in advance. Late check outs may be subject to docking of the deposit.

~ WIFI is available via satellite service (connection speed and availabilityis not guaranteed). <<< see "availability is" merged

~ Our cabin has front and back yard with firepit.

~ All roads leading to the cabin are paved.

~ 'Like' Blue Mountain Lodge on Facebook - we post updates, specials, or availability due to last minute cancellations.

Ah, very cool! I don't know why that didn't come up on Google when I was searching to be sure before posting here.

While it would of course be preferable not to have to turn PM tools on and pay more for the feature, eliminating the headache for me is honestly worth it, so I've turned it on and am setting it up now. Thanks!

We released portal access for employees/housekeeping last month: https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/portal-access-for-owners-and-staff-released. That allows you to grant access to see different levels of the calendar, from availability only to full financials, add access to block-off etc.

This is a feature that I would kill for (and, honestly, I just assumed would be included in the product and am disappointed is not included).

I have been fighting for two weeks with finding some way to publish the ICS feed in a manner my housekeepers can easily see and understand. I've tried embedding it as a Google Calendar on a Google Sites page, sharing on Zoho Calendar, using some third-party tool that isn't even actively published anymore (InstantCal), etc. None of them has proven stable and reliable and easy to use (for me or the recipients).

Right now, my housekeeper has my password to my HomeAway account. That's obviously not ideal, but it's the only solution we could come up with (she has other owners who do the same thing) to let her have easy access to my calendar, but it is still a semi-manual process as she needs me to manually provide her the door lock codes (based on the guest's phone number) for Airbnb and Flipkey bookings.

I suppose I can give her my login information to OwnerRez instead of HomeAway, but that seems like this should be something that I really shouldn't have to do...

This has now been released: https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/enhanced-autoresponders. We did one better than just the listing site criteria and added time of day criteria as well ;-)

Yep, this is rising in priority. We'll keep you posted as we get into it, but it should be soon.

I have asked about that also previously...

I would like to respond with different email content based on the listing site. Can you add the listing site as an option on the Auto Responders set up page? Since homeaway won't pass the traveler's email anymore at all, I need a different response from those i send to travelers that request quotes from my own website, and other sources.

Bulk import is not quite the same as WH rates are dynamic - they can be adjusted daily based on local demand, seasonality and other factors such as availability of inventory in the area. So I cannot be reimporting them daily :)
I have it turned on on AirBNB and TA, and while if averaged my rates are not far apart from WH rates, WH is more fine tuned to, for example, price some weekdays lower than I would but weekends higher than I typically would, and maybe even make rates look more appealing to the potential guests. I can live without WH on OR, as I can use TA rate set by WH for TA inquiries, ABB gets its own rates via WH and so on.

Your bulk import is a pretty good fit for me - thank you!

We've been in contact with the Wheelhouse guys, and an integration is possible in theory but we haven't yet completed it. Are you going based on their standard auto price or doing the detailed seasonal adjustments?

We do have a bulk rates/seasons import/export already. If you look under Tools you'll see a Rates/Seasons import (https://app.ownerrez.com/bookings/import/rateexcel) and Rates/Season export (https://app.ownerrez.com/bookings/import/rateexport) that's based on an Excel template.