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We are not a fan of the new changes! It is not as easy to text a guest. Before you would click "Conversation" tab, you would see past communications with the guest and could easily write a text message and pick the correct phone number. press send and DONE. Now you have to go to "inbox", Compose, Type in the guest name, and it formates to a email automatically so you have to figure out how to switch to the SMS and it doesn't pop up with the different phone number options for the guest. Also the history activity is harder to glance at to see past messages. I have not found a Pro to the changes yet but as always OwnerRez tries hard with updates with any luck they will get enough complaints on this to prioritize. Please see the video we sent to support.
That said, if Airbnb is “marginally useful” at best in your experience, it begs the question: why continue relying on them? Many hosts use Airbnb strategically — as a visibility tool or for price steering. If guests are consistently “unhappy,” sometimes it has less to do with Airbnb itself and more with how the experience is managed. A little proactive relationship-building goes a long way: calling guests before arrival, setting expectations clearly, and making them feel welcomed often reduces the chance of them “gaming the system.” A strong guest experience attracts better behavior and repeat business.
Balking at $150.00 for a damage policy is all relevant. Safely has cheaper policies with less coverage, $150 is for $25,000 damage. Their $10,000 in damage is like $95.00 and I am sure they have smaller policies for smaller properties. Our properties range from 1.5m to 10m in value so we go with $25,000 in damage, 1m/1m liability/structure.
I never said that I was relying on them. I do not. I am A SH and I have hundreds of 5-star reviews across all popular platforms. Guests being unhappy does not mean they are indeed unhappy. What I mean is that Airbnb guests tend to act unhappy and come up with nitpicky stuff to extract refunds because Airbnb has trained them to act that way - refunding 30% for just a phone call alleging something is wrong, most of the time requiring no proof from the guest and just taking their word for it. Not my experience necessarily (as I have very few Airbnb bookings), but other hosts whom I know personally. Some hosts I know even refuse to list on Airbnb altogether because it is more trouble than it is worth to them. In my market, there are 1M + properties, but not the norm. I am sure there are a few 10M ones, but they are exceptions, not the rule. Different clientele. the $150 was just an example of the price sensitivity of my local market. As mentioned above, some travelers are fed up with "extra fees" and are going back to hotels. Now, Airbnb will "hide" commission in the rate, but the out-the-door price is still not palatable to many nowadays. Middle-class / lower middle-class travelers do not have much extra money to pay extra, nor the desire to.
Most private owners actually have more margin to work with than you suggest. Owners who self-manage typically retain an extra 30–50% of revenue compared to those paying a professional property manager. In Colorado, for example, it’s standard for management fees to run 30–50% of lodging revenue.
Regarding the Super Bowl — while I agree nobody books directly “because of” a TV commercial, in our market it has a ripple effect. Super Bowl weekend is consistently one of the busiest booking times of the year because friends and families are gathered together, and the conversation naturally shifts to planning spring break or a ski trip. We see a measurable spike in reservations during that week, and national marketing helps drive that.
On the regulatory side, I’d strongly encourage you to get involved with a local advocacy group. Short-term rentals are under pressure in many destinations, including ours. We operate in the second most dense STR market in the U.S., and local governments here have capped or outright banned STR growth in many areas. There is even a stated objective to reduce the overall number of STRs by as much as 30% in order to limit tourism — despite the fact that tourism is the only real driver of local employment. We’re not unique in this; Hawaii and Barcelona are going through the same thing. For property managers, every time a property sells, it risks being lost as a vacation rental permanently. Our business has zero opportunity for growth, and we have had no choice but to cut staffing. Not to mention we now have to pay $800 per bedroom per year for our permits and 4x the sewer cost due to STR's generating more waste. A six bedroom permit cost $6000 a year now in Breckenridge and Aspen is proposing $5000 per bedroom per year. https://coloradohardmoney.com/one-colorado-city-proposes-5k-room-in-short-term-rental-fees/. You have to assume your local town council is watching to see if they can use this as a revenue stream as well.
This is why lobbying matters. It’s not just about “illegal vs legal markets,” it’s about preserving our ability to operate where STRs are legal but under threat. For every direct booking we take, we make a contribution to COSTRA (Colorado Short-Term Rental Alliance) to help with that effort.
Here are a couple of relevant resources:
That said, if Airbnb is “marginally useful” at best in your experience, it begs the question: why continue relying on them? Many hosts use Airbnb strategically — as a visibility tool or for price steering. If guests are consistently “unhappy,” sometimes it has less to do with Airbnb itself and more with how the experience is managed. A little proactive relationship-building goes a long way: calling guests before arrival, setting expectations clearly, and making them feel welcomed often reduces the chance of them “gaming the system.” A strong guest experience attracts better behavior and repeat business.
Balking at $150.00 for a damage policy is all relevant. Safely has cheaper policies with less coverage, $150 is for $25,000 damage. Their $10,000 in damage is like $95.00 and I am sure they have smaller policies for smaller properties. Our properties range from 1.5m to 10m in value so we go with $25,000 in damage, 1m/1m liability/structure.
Adding to this
The partial year view of the calendar is the worst. Owners are looking to see what their fy rev is and it changed every month as prior months roll off.
Having a portal that's useful to owners would be incredibly helpful. I get complaints and confusion regarding this dashboard every month.
As of now, OwnerRez does not currently have a built-in configuration option to hide previous year's information from the Owner Portal. The owner portal dashboard displays historical booking data and earnings information without date range restrictions that can be updated. This would be very useful and helpful when owners are looking for current year displays only!
. do your W2 employees get paid time off.. yes.. do they call in sick.. yes.. etc..etc..
Most private owners do not have employees, let alone W2 employees. And most do not cater to private plane clientele that does not care about out-of-the-door rental cost. In the market where my properties are, people are already turning to hotels because they are finding "extra fees" to be excessive. Mind you, most hosts only have a cleaning fee; all the other "extra fees" are what platforms add, plus local taxes. Of course, now Airbnb shifts to owner-only commission, but that is just a cosmetic update that does not change the out-of-the-door cost to the traveler. In my market, most travelers will balk at $150 damage protection cost on top of everything else. Your reality is not the absolute majority of the hosts' reality. In my personal experience, I find Airbnb marginally useful - to get anything out of them is an uphill battle because you have to interact with overseas hourly employees who just tend to read or copy/paste some canned script. I am puzzled about the Super Bowl commercial reference - I am not aware of anyone booking a property because of the Super Bowl ad. Also, I am not sure what lobbying is needed. Maybe in some markets where "Airbnbs" are illegal. In my tourist market, Vacation rentals are legal and a main driver of the local economy and employment. I would be perfectly happy if Airbnb ceased to exist - they have distorted the rental markets and facilitated the creation of entitled, never-satisfied, messy, "rules don't apply to me" type of guests who know how to "game" the Airbnb system.
Hi Yavuz, just wanted to circle back on the question a couple of others have asked. If you can share what mirror PMS you are using and any tips it would be greatly appreciated!
Hi, everyone!
We spoke with our contacts at Airbnb who have assured us that this Airbnb feature is limited to a small number of non-API connected hosts.
The article referenced in the initial post here is nearly a year old, and it should also be noted that the article makes no mention of September 30th for a start date. https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/3764
If you are an API connected host with OwnerRez and received an email from Airbnb regarding this, please forward that to us, ensuring we can see the email address Airbnb sent it from and the entire message you received. Please also include your Airbnb Host ID.
Thank you for requesting this and for all the thinking behind your request.
I've never had to use SMS to get the POC signed, they always do it through the app. I send a few reminders, but they've always signed after getting those. That said, I agree we should still get the temporary phone number as well for situations like you mentioned.
The problem with not importing that temp Airbnb number is that the vast majority of guests do not see and respond to the triggered message going through Airbnb to sign the rental agreement when they book, so a second message has to be sent via SMS to get them to sign. If that number isn't imported, then we will have to go to the booking on Airbnb instead of OR and manually send them the message to sign the agreement.
@Eric Agreed that just not importing any # for Airbnb bookings feels like the v1.0 of the solve here.
Doing that for every single OR user could feel heavy-handed to those operating in areas where these temp numbers haven't/aren't rolling out, but maybe there's an easy solve for that hangup, too ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm losing my processing fee for cleaning & admin fee, on VRBO, based on the limitations of the OwnerRez surcharge settings.
On my direct booking website, I have the ability to designate the line placement, which ensures that my processing fee captures the intended line items. I do not have this option for my VRBO bookings.
Please fix this!
Thanks, Tyler.
I agree, trying to tell guests to override a number they don't recognize on the form is not an acceptable way to move forward.
I can't imagine it's too terribly challenging to just stop importing that number altogether.
Ideally, there'd be a new field entirely for this "Airbnb Temporary Phone Number", but I recognize that's going to be a bit more work.
Either way, this temp number from Airbnb has very little use, and I'd prefer to just ignore it altogether.
Thank you, @Tyler! Appreciate the well-written and clear feature request!
The Request
For Airbnb bookings only, adjust the POC Form so that the phone number field is left blank *AND* is a required field, so that hosts can continue to reliably collect guests' real phone numbers.
The Background
As of September 30, 2025, Airbnb is transitioning to issuing temporary phone numbers for guests that are created at the time of booking and expire 2 days after booking.
This means that where OR has previously been autopopulating the phone number field on the POC (point of contact) Form, this will now autopopulate with this temporary number instead. If left as-is, while guests do have the opportunity to adjust this, many simply will not, clicking through to complete the renter agreement
This creates several issues for hosts, including:
Here's a recent ongoing OR discussion on this topic: https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/general-help/airbnb-will-be-hiding-guest-phone-s-starting-sept-30
Other details
As part of the suggested solution above, it would be helpful to:
It's unclear exactly which what locations around the world this is rolling out to currently, or could be rolled out to in the future, but if there's a way to detect whether the number coming through from Airbnb is one of their temporary numbers, then the OR POC Form could dynamically populate with the blank field when it is, and just use the original flow if it's not. This would avoid unnecessary changes for OR users who aren't yet affected by this change.
Finally, I submitted a question about how this would be handled to OR support, and got the below friendly, though unsatisfying response. Not only is asking the guest to change the number in a pre-populated field an unreliable way to collect the data, the suggested language also seems likely to trigger an Airbnb flag for trying to move guests to book off-platform.
From OR Support:
The number on the POC form will be pre-populated with the number that comes in from Airbnb. You may want to consider updating your channel template with some language like:
"Airbnb now provides temporary phone numbers for guests. Please ensure you provide your real phone number when filling out the point of contact form and renter agreement in the link below."
When the guest fills out the POC form with their real number, it will be considered the primary number on the booking and will be used by the system for the door lock code, which is generated 3 days before arrival.
Please reopen this feature request.
The latest LoS broke the ability to stack discount codes for VRBO.
Example, we have LOS for 7 and 28 nights.
We want to stack a 10% discount for bookings that arrive by X date on top of LOS.
This worked until last month when they changed the way you do discounts.
Per Chris too many people were making mistakes on discounts. That’s not a reason to not support stacking. That’s an education and operator issue.
In addition to reoccurring expenses, creating a predefined list of common expenses, available from a dropdown menu when recording expenses would be a time saver.
While the Preview button is certainly helpful in the process of building or editing custom message templates, there is currently no way to see or test how the messages will view when actually sent via email. With coding and tables, etc., it's crucial to be able to confirm how the emails will format when opened on various devices. Right now the only way to do so is to launch the new template, create a fake booking for myself, and send myself the emails. Then I have to cancel my fake booking once complete with the edits. Having a means to send ourselves a test email from within the create/edit template screen would be a game-changer!!
They do all of that.. Do they market our properties.. yes.. do they run Super Bowl commercials.. yes.. do they authenticate users with government I’d.. yes…. Are the fees full transparent.. yes.. should they be compensated.. yes.. do they spend money on public policy and lobbying.. yes.. do they donate to local lawsuits and government regulatory issues.. yes.. do they handle payment processing.. yes.. do they facilitate sales tax remittence.. yes.. did they massively scale a global industry to become a household name like Tylenol, Windex, Kleenex, band-aid, yes..
I can’t speak for AirCover, we don’t use it.. we use Safely and sell every guest a policy for $150 bucks and 25k of damage protection…. We have lots of regular guest too who drive up from Denver to Vail or Breckenridge.. AirBNB delivers more than a bargain..
I missed a lot more.. what are you saying they don’t do that I mentioned… There is probably more.. do your W2 employees get paid time off.. yes.. do they call in sick.. yes.. etc..etc..
>AirBNB feels like a perfect ten compared to managing any W2 employees for sales, marketing, advertising, debt collection, etc. AirBNB has very little drama compared to our staff. We even have return guest book on platform and pay the service fee, it’s a guaranteed five star review that you can buy for 15% When I travel I use full AirBNb and don’t even hunt down direct websites.
lol. Airbnb doesn't do all of that.
Glad you're happy with it, in your private plane world. The rest of us resent their expensive and hidden fee structure, failure to deliver on aircover's promises, refusal to hold guests accountable, and the cumbersome workings of their site.
AirBNB feels like a perfect ten compared to managing any W2 employees for sales, marketing, advertising, debt collection, etc. AirBNB has very little drama compared to our staff. We even have return guest book on platform and pay the service fee, it’s a guaranteed five star review that you can buy for 15% When I travel I use full AirBNb and don’t even hunt down direct websites.
>When wealthy people book trips, have private jets, they are not looking for a deal. They are looking to get the booking done. When they search, I want to show up first. We have regular meetings with our VRBO and AirBNB account manager. They are great.
Sounds like you're in a different demographic than I am. I've never seen another host refer to AirBnB as great. If I had known how short they fall from delivering what they promise, I would never have gotten into this business. Their greedy ineptitude is why I'm exploring ways to shift bookings away from their platform.
We have used that strategy for 20+ years and done A/B test. We have had several VRBO bear stays. I am ok if a guest books another property, it always works out. There are 20,000 STR units in our market, second largest destination market in the US. AirBNb and VRBOs success is our success. In sales 15% might be some of the lowest SG&A on earth. We are excited for the VRBO pay for placement coming soon, with our units I could boost my commission rate to 20% for placement and still perform well. A higher placement means you can charge more too. When wealthy people book trips, have private jets, they are not looking for a deal. They are looking to get the booking done. When they search, I want to show up first. We have regular meetings with our VRBO and AirBNB account manager. They are great.
This is an unconventional strategy, and one many would consider dangerous because you're steering customers to websites that just as often as not then want to steer those customers to book properties OTHER than yours. Remember, they don't care about you. They only care that 1) a booking is made through their site so they collect their fees and commissions, and 2) that booking is made with whatever property can make them the most money.
As far as the OwnerRez Rate Checker including the VRBO service fee, there is no way to do that, as the service fee is not a straight percentage, and varies tremendously from one guest to the next, based on the site algorithm's expectation of how the particular guest will be willing to pay, the property, time and date of the stay, time and date of the booking, and other alchemy. I'm pretty confident the Rate Checker never includes the VRBO service fee.
You're lucky if you have success with VRBO and AirBnB. The $1100 per year in bookings they bring us aren't enough that we would ever steer anything towards them.
Why do Owner-Rez hosted sites display tax-inclusive pricing when the big sites display pre-tax pricing? This results in the false impression that booking direct will cost them more! Please. Please. Please give us the opportunity to compete by showing pre-tax totals, like the other sites.
As a suggestion you don’t need to have that much of a savings for direct. You can price steer with as little as 2-4% savings. We actually price direct higher than AirBNB to steer into VRBO or AirBNB and keep search rank higher on those platforms as they deliver strong results.
This feature would be amazing. As a stop-gap, can we at least make it easier for people to compare apples to apples by displaying pre-tax pricing on owner-rez hosted sites? Booking on my site results in a 14% savings but the guests only see a 2% discount, because the big sites don't include taxes in their at-a-glance pricing.
Hi OwnerRez team and community,
We’d love to suggest a feature that would bring immense value to many property managers working with specialized teams: granular, department-based permission controls for team members.
Currently, OwnerRez offers three levels of user access, but none allow us to share specific guest contact information while restricting access to financial or sensitive reservation data. This creates a real challenge when trying to collaborate efficiently across departments.
📌 Example from our operations:
Our marketing team needs real-time access to the CRM section of OwnerRez to run targeted campaigns, track guest engagement, and automate communications.
However, they do not need — and should not have — access to reservation dates, payment details, financial reports, or internal notes.
Our finance team requires access only to billing, receipts, and financial reports.
✅ What we are suggesting:
The ability to assign team members to specific roles or departments
Admin control to select exactly which data modules each role can access (CRM, reservations, calendar, inbox, financials, etc.)
Options for view-only or edit access per section
Role visibility based on need-to-know, respecting privacy, security, and team workflows
⚠️ Important Note: Legal Compliance with LGPD (Brazil)
This request is also not just about convenience — it’s about compliance.
We are based in Brazil, where the LGPD (Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados) strictly regulates how companies can collect, store, and share personal data. Under this law, we must ensure that only authorized team members can view or process specific types of personal guest data.
Being unable to limit access to certain data types (like financial details) while sharing others (like contact info) puts us in a legally vulnerable position. This limitation in OwnerRez forces us to choose between full access or no access — which is unsustainable for a growing team with distributed roles.
💡 Why This Matters
Implementing granular permissions would not only make OwnerRez more powerful and adaptable — it would also help many global users stay legally compliant while scaling their businesses. We're happy to help shape this feature and would love to see it gain traction in the community.
Thanks for considering!
—
Alarea Suh
Founder, Okaeri Home Apartments
📍 São Paulo, Brazil
I agree with Bri, this is badly needed! The responses from OwnerRez for this topic seem dismissive, like they don't want to bother with finding a solution.
The booking system I used before this one I was able to easily quote multiple properties using a drop down and selecting the properties I wanted so I know it can be done.
OR, please take the time to find a solution to this problem.
