Feature Requests

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If you have an Expedia link on your VRBO Channel page in OR, then, yes, this does mean that your property is visible on Expedia.

However, any booking that comes from Expedia, while it is labeled as such, obeys all the Vrbo rules and configuration you have set up.  In other words, it acts exactly like any normal Vrbo booking.  So, if you are satisfied with your configuration as regards Vrbo bookings, Expedia bookings will be functionally no different.  Remember, Vrbo and Expedia are the same company, so they can route bookings through different brands while enforcing whatever is configured.

Unfortunately, none of the other channels have this capability.  In fact, Vrbo doesn't allow same-day bookings at all.

It would however be possible for direct bookings, so, we'll leave this suggestion open to collect votes for that.

I see an 'Expedia' link under my VRBO Channel page in OR.

1. Does this mean my listing is populated to Expedia? If yes, then how is payment processed?

2. I don't see house rules are being populated on the Expedia site. How does this work?

3. Will Renter Agreement also get sent automatically to guests?

Rather than asking every question possible, in essence, will the workflow with Expedia the same as with Airbnb & VRBO?

Thanks,

Harry

Yep, that’d do it.

For Airbnb all you can really do is the 25/night. 

So I should just create a basic one for ABB and have it be for the ABB Channel only and then for the other more complex do it as all channels except ABB.

The three surcharge method would work for Vrbo and direct bookings.

There’s no way to make it work for Airbnb or booking.com as they don’t support complex criteria on fees. We’ve submitted feature requests for more flexibility but currently only very simple canned fees are possible on Airbnb/BDC.

Chris do you know how the channels like AirBnB and VRBO would handle this?

This is possible now if you use three separate surcharges with criteria to apply the different breakpoints — a $50 surcharge with number of nights = 1 criteria, a $25/night surcharge with number of nights 2 to 8 criteria, and a $200 surcharge with number of nights > 8 criteria.

If you did it that way, the surcharge would work for Vrbo and direct bookings. This sort of surcharge wouldn’t work for Airbnb or booking.com either way as they don’t support complex criteria on fees.

This is a capability that is available on AirBnB where they will allow guests to do a same day booking but only up until the time that is configured.   We for example will allow for a same day guest booking if the property is available without any kind of special approval until 4pm.   After 4pm we need to approve the inquiry.

This functionality is only available for AirBnB.   We would like to see it expanded to all same day bookings regardless of their source.   (This may be problematic for some of the Channels but any that have the capability.)   At a minimum we would like to see if for our own Hosted website bookings.

I would like to be able to do a surcharge that might be $25 per night but has a $50 minimum charge and a $200.00 maximum charge no matter how long the stay...

For example a 1 night stay would have a minimum charge of $50 but a 10 night stay would have a maximum charge of 200.00  for stays of 2 to 8 nights it would be $25 x the number of nights.

Ok - this makes sense, although maybe there is some middle ground where field codes can be made available more widely within certain selected rules. In any event, field codes are very helpful and would be great to be able to draw on them more widely. thanks for your clarification. Nick.

Would be good to be able to reference a date that an email is planned (e.g. date that guest will receive the welcome pack).

Unfortunately, where field codes are not available in messages of certain types, it's because this is not possible, because of the nature of the fields.

Let's consider your specific example - a booking template does not allow the use of rental agreement related fields.  While for most clients, most bookings only do have one (or no) rental agreement, that is not a limit of the system.  It is possible to have multiple rental agreements on the same booking, for a variety of reasons - separate pet agreements, a requirement that every single guest personally sign the agreement not just whoever made the booking, etc.

Therefore, it's impossible to use those field codes in booking templates, because the system has no way of knowing which of the potentially many applicable agreements should be used to populate that field.

Similarly, consider the field codes related to payments.  It's normal practice for one booking to have many payments.  If you are generating a Payment type message, you know which specific payment it is for and can use those field codes.  But if it's a Booking type message, how would the system know which of the many payments, with all sorts of different amounts, statuses, etc., should be used?

Hope this helps explain the limitations!

I don't think I've seen this request mentioned before, but every time I go to set the cleaning date on a new booking I wonder to myself why the date picker calendar defaults to today's month instead of the booking's departure month? It seems a pretty simple thing. If a booking's departure date is Sep 13, the cleaning date picker calendar should default to September, not February (in my opinion).

The full list of field codes is very long, and helpful.

Unfortunately they are not all accessible via all templates.

For example, a booking template does not allow the use of rental agreement related fields (ie called Leasing fields in the long list). Why not make all fields accessible no matter what the purpose of the booking template is?

This would provide for a much greater level of functionality in constructing the templates.

@BlueMtnCabins - Building into your rates... Are you principle or Prop manager. Trying to determine if "Rate" is consumers rental price or a management fee. I can see adding to the rate (price) to consumer. But, it may be hard to increase PM fee by 3% in a competitive market. I definitely see you point about VRBO not refunding service fee if you withold for a cancellation and how that can lead to chargebacks, bad reviews etc. This is a conundrum I'm working on. 3% adds up. A $7,000 booking credit card fee is $210. The guest booking fee is $886! So, if I collect $225 as a cancellation fee, VRBO will not refund their $886 service fee. Now guest is paying about $1,100 to cancel with lots of notice. I think avoiding this scenario is crucial. I appreciate your insight and need to figure out how best to structure this. Additionally, I fear an economic or health scenario can create Lots of cancellations in which case this could become a problem if it's just a business expense without collecting for it on each booking.

I am a self-managing owner. Ken outlined how you can do 97% refund and what the risks are. I was not aware that you can refund 97% and Vrbo would refund the service fee. 

if I collect $225 as a cancellation fee, VRBO will not refund their $886 service fee.

This is not necessarily accurate.

According to Vrbo official policies, yes you are correct.  And if you or the guest reaches out to Vrbo about a refund of the service fee, and they find that you the host did not issue a 100% full and complete refund, yes they'll keep the service fee.

But...

We have found that, if you clearly state and in fact keep a reasonably small cancellation fee using OwnerRez custom cancellation policies - and, yes, in our experience, 3% qualifies - and if you patiently allow the automatic systems to do their thing without getting any human beings involved... yes, you can keep your cancellation fee, but even so, the guest does get a refund of their Vrbo service fee.

Of course, to re-emphasize, if anyone calls Vrbo to ask, that will result in the Vrbo service fee not being refunded.  And it can sometimes take a month or two for the fee refund to be processed.  So there is indeed a certain risk there.  Therefore, it becomes a business decision for each individual host as to which approach provides better security and less risk.

@BlueMtnCabins - Building into your rates... Are you principle or Prop manager. Trying to determine if "Rate" is consumers rental price or a management fee. I can see adding to the rate (price) to consumer. But, it may be hard to increase PM fee by 3% in a competitive market. I definitely see you point about VRBO not refunding service fee if you withold for a cancellation and how that can lead to chargebacks, bad reviews etc. This is a conundrum I'm working on. 3% adds up. A $7,000 booking credit card fee is $210. The guest booking fee is $886! So, if I collect $225 as a cancellation fee, VRBO will not refund their $886 service fee. Now guest is paying about $1,100 to cancel with lots of notice. I think avoiding this scenario is crucial. I appreciate your insight and need to figure out how best to structure this. Additionally, I fear an economic or health scenario can create Lots of cancellations in which case this could become a problem if it's just a business expense without collecting for it on each booking.

At present, it is not.  However, I've moved this to the Features Request forum so it can garner votes of support.

It would be convenient when running sales reports to have the option to include historical data for deactivated properties. In looking at year over year, or past sales, a dropdown box to choose any or all deactivated properties would be nice. The process of reactivating, running reports, then deactivating properties is tedious.

I'm using the booking widget and once guests submit they are shown the response in the attached screen shot.  Is it possible to edit this text?

For my particular use-case, people are putting in rooming requests for a lottery and it will be 4 weeks before they hear back.  While that's explained up front, this message contradicts that and is confusing people.

April 7, 2025 Update:

The photo ID collection upon signing of the Rental Agreement needs to have an option to not require it for repeat guests, as well as for notes and files for Bookings be connected to Contacts.

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Right now, if I upload a file for a particular booking, such as a photo ID, that file is not associated with the contact that it is for. So the next time that contact books, I have to search for their last booking to get that ID. Same is true with Notes.

It makes sense to me that this needs to change so that there is an option to have files and note connected to particular contacts. 

I should be able to create a Trigger or Tag based on a SURCHARGE payment.  For example, if a guest pays for early check-in, I want to create an automation 3 days in advance to notify me so that I can manually modify the check-in time.  Otherwise I would never know if a guest paid extra for a service.  

It's a no-brainer.  Make it happen!

I like being able to send SMS messages to guests, thanks for that feature.

The problem is once I've done that, they now think they can text me with trivial texts like "Which cupboard is the cheese grater in?" instead of just looking for it. With a chatty or needy guest, this is a huge problem.

I'd like an SMS number that cannot accept replies. Or, an auto-reply that responds to incoming texts with "Sorry, this number cannot receive text messages, please contact the host using the website you used to book the property."

agreed - I really think we should be able to create our own "default".  I don't want to see blocks on my default list either - only reservations.

I really wish my default list of bookings did not include my cancelations. Normally if I need info from a cancellation I just search for them.

I really wish my default list of bookings did not include my cancelations. Normally if I need info from a cancellation I just search for them.

Any updates?   Kind of annoying that we have this for Owners and not PM.

I would love to be able to just save my "default" options for generating PM statements instead of them rolling back.

I would like for the POC form to include 1. What made you decide to choose this property and 2. Will you be celebrating an occasion during your stay.

Thanks Lisa

I added Early Arrivals & Late Departure Fees on my booking page.  Many of them sign up for it. However, i have to pull reports or wait for the guest to let me know that they've selected one of the above.   

1) My request is that it notifies me when these add ons are selected (is there a way this can be done already?) since I have to manually change check in and check out times.

2) I would like to vote for a function that automatically changes the time of check-in or check-out if selected.  This may be an advanced feature but just throwing it out there. 

Thank you!