Feature Requests

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I wonder if there is an app for OwnerRez for hosts and for guests.

I have ownerrez at my phone but an app for owners could be more user friendly.

Also have you thought of a guest app. Where they can send messages directly to the hosts from the app. They can see the address, wifi info, their door code, garage code, checkout instructions, check-in instructions, Area recommendations etc. Such an app would have made it great experience with the guests.

The plans I've seen aren't *that* much more expensive than normal TI. Normals is usually 8 or 9% and CFAR might be a percent or two more.

I suppose, but cfar is pricey...

It's not about legal fault. It's more about thinking ahead about human nature and providing a gentle landing for the guest before they run into this, get mad and start yelling and screaming. Guests have a lot of power via the credit card system these days. They can file chargebacks and disputes and tend to have a high success rate. We've heard of guests not showing up and calling their credit card and saying "product not delivered" because they never actually showed up and the bank gave them all their money back. The fact that there was a 10 page renter agreement, signed by them, doesn't always work. If you present the guest with a lot of chances to buy Travel Insurance and make it clear that things aren't covered and TI gives them a way out, you tend to get better results down stream. Even if they didn't buy it, it's in their psyche that it's their fault and the entire cost is on them because they chose not to buy TI.

That might be true, a lot of guests will not use trip insurance. I'm not sure why you feel is your responsibility for something like this. As long as your legal agreement is Ironclad. Everyone in that area will have red tide, it is not your fault or responsibility when something happens.

No updates or ETAs yet but thanks for the nudge. We have a clear path forward to offering CFAR (which means "cancel for any reason", for those that don't know). We just haven't gotten there yet.

Hi Chris -
Any updates on the CFAR Policy implementation? Right now, Red Tide is not considered an acceptable reason to cancel a trip to our beach place in Florida and receive reimbursement under a standard trip insurance policy. CFAR is the only one that will cover it. Last year, we were left in a bit of a pickle-- refund guests' money (ouch!) or keep their money and lose them as future guests. Moving the reservation just kicks the can down the road. Thanks as always for your help.

Yep, we have assignment and acceptance for housekeepers on the todo list. It's been demoted a couple times for channel integrations, most recently Airbnb, but once that's done a housekeeping module will be at the top of the priority list.

Yep, we have plans for both categorization of expenses and surcharges as well as tracking maintenance.

We're currently working through channel integrations, most recently Airbnb, but once that's done those other tracking things will be high on the priority list.

This is an excellent idea that I could use as well.

It would be helpful to have a report that displays what properties are check in /out by housekeeper.
I have 4 different housekeeping companies and it's time consuming to export and then have to sort the reports by properties that each company cleans. It would be awesome to assign a housekeeper to a property and be able to run a report by housekeeper. And/OR have the portal access have a field that assigns the access to an owner vs a housekeeper and let the housekeeper be able to run the Daily Checklist report to see who is checking in/ out and staying. Easy view to read for everyone.

Add a new report to track maintenance issues or use the Expense area and add a catergory (picklist)
Expense: Maintenance, Housekeeping, General, Admin ,etc.
This way you can run reports on expenses by category by property.

It would be nice to record all the times a PM has to go to a property and record the reasons why. You can currently use expenses but it would be great it it could be separated out on the PM statement.

A lot of the stuff is out there - articles, forum threads, etc.

I am a writer by trade. There is two parts to documentation 1) content and 2) getting people to that content.

The main problem I am finding in setting up, is it is a fishing expedition to find applicable explanations and grasp stuff to apply it. You would spend less time explaining some stuff to forum questioners, if you organized 80% of the stuff most people need to get set up. The search box for support is a messy way to figure out how to do things.

The forum model is weak, as once something is a few weeks old, it rolls off from view. You should manage Forum threads with people looking back, in mind.
-- Add a NEW forum category on top "Helpful Articles about OwnerRez", where you can put threads to past articles and past forum really useful posts that might help people. Make it Read Only. People know how to find the forum.
-- Add a NEW forum category called "Setting Up Your NEW OwnerRez Account". Put it second. If things get in it that don't apply, move them to the proper forum category.
-- Forum category "General Help and Questions" is the most popular, so maybe rename it to "Help With Your EXISTING OwnerRez Account." Make it the third forum category. Again, If things get in it that don't apply, move them to the proper forum category.

But I do not think this is just an OwnerRez problem. Any sophisticated, complex product will take a lot of thought. That is why some spend hundreds in a one-time setup cost. It has some merit, offering it as an option.

I would focus on tutorials and videos before articles.

Proper support - articles, tutorials, videos - is our number one problem by significant margin. We have some major updates coming on that but tend to be slow on actually delivering on that side. Our main www site is years behind. The Features/Tour area is laughably out of date. 😥 Frustrating but fixable!

I am in many groups and my observation is that many people are somewhat intimidated by the set up process and do not use OR to even half of its capability. Are there any videos or slide shows stepping people through basic set up, defining property and amenities, hooking into major OTAs( and I don't even mean channel integration - just icals), setting up auto responders with templates, rental agreements etc.

Even in Smoky Mountains Owners group where many use OR I still notice that many basic features seem to be not understood or under utilized.

Am I that one user that every IT implementation has who knows just enough to be dangerous? :-) LOL

Indeed. At least if you're the size of Airbnb or HA. Agoda and some others have signed with us but they're too small, buggy to be worth the while yet.

Now we're talking! You should have led with that first!

(Kidding!)

Yep make sense. You need to have a training class for others, BlueMtn. 😉

OTA full integrations come first

I consider that an update - although without a date. ;) Thanks for the reply and hopefully the OTAs will stop messing with things long enough to move forward in other areas.

Ps - If you enable this I will send you a coupon for a huge discount! Let me know when it happens......

I do not need link for VRBO reviews in this particular template. They get the link to post a review on VRBO from VRBO automatically.
Also, the goal of this template is to emphasize booking direct with me next time so that they don't have to pay VRBO fees.

That's probably because VRBO/HA no longer allows non-verified guests to write reviews. They recently closed that off like AIr does. So linking to the reviews page on your VRBO/HA listing will no longer work unless the guest has a verified booking on VRBO.

No updates yet - sorry about that! 😥

We keep having to back-burner stuff like that because of important features that pop up. We just finished a large HomeAway API update for instance which slowed down a bunch of other things. And now we just signed with Airbnb so that will be coming too in the near future, also slowing down some things. There are certain features that we are forced to drop everything and work on based on time tables, industry partners, etc. Rest assured, though, that we are working on a bunch of other things. We just expanded our Door Lock integrations and have more coming out soon. We are also overhauling our email templates and system messages and will have that out soon.

Your template does not have a line for vrbo/ha reviews

Any progress on Coupon Codes? I am grateful for OwnerRez and the response to questions is superb.

The only thing I find lacking of serious import is the ability to offer coupons for marketing purposes. Would love an update on if this is something we can realistically expect and if so when.

You don't use vrbo/ha?

yes. You need to set up an email template that will request guest to write a review ( I get mine triggered 4 days after departure). Insert the field {BUREVIEW} - when guest clicks on it, it will open a form for them to leave a review. You get notification, open a review, look over and tick to make it visible.

Here is my template

Dear {CFIRST},

If you can take a couple of minutes out of your busy day, we'd appreciate it if you would fill an online review of your choice so that other guests can see what to expect. 

Review on our website ( this is {BUREVIEW} link)

Review on Google  ( link to GMB)

Review on TripAdvisor ( link to TA)

Did you book with us direct? If so, great! You got the best price! If you booked via a 3rd party site such as AirBnB, HomeAway/VRBO or TripAdvisor - they mark up the owner's rate anywhere from 7 to 17%! Vacation home owners advertise on all those booking portals, but you can find individual property websites (like ours) and social media pages. By booking direct from owners, you could have saved {BXSVCFEE} on your stay! < this is custom field I have for service fee amount>

Please know that there are real people behind owning, caring for and maintaining vacation properties like ours, so you are not "renting an AirBnB" - you are renting someone's vacation home, 2nd home or future retirement dream home. These mega booking sites do not own vacation homes - folks like us do.

We offer returning guest discount (when booked direct with us, good at any of our cabins) and friends/family referral discount.

Thanks again, and if you have any questions or concerns, or need information, please let us know.

Signed

It is now 2019- is there a guest review or some method of making notes about a particular guest (e.g. they prefer to use our dog gate amenity, birthdays other important dates)?