Feature Requests

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Yes please! It’s so embarrassing when I forget to skip my review follow up message. I have thought this many times, thanks for reading my mind. 😄

Makes me wonder - I currently have 3 legal agreements. One for channel bookings, one for direct & one for pets. The booking agreements are exactly the same except for the payment clauses. Sounds like a feature like this could allow me to fold them into one agreement with just the payment clauses swapped out. 

Personally I would prioritize other high value feature requests like the unified inbox and more customization for discount codes & gift certs, but this would be a nice upgrade eventually. 

Yes!!!

Almost 14 years ago my previous PMS Software had this feature.

Inquiries and quotes and emails opened (or not) need to be included in triggers. Not just bookings.

This is at the heart of effective marketing:

- Three days after sending a quote that has not been opened by the guest, send this email.

- Three days after sending a quote that was opened by the guest, but not booked, send this email.

- And so on...

What would be REALLY cool would be the means to have automated emails go out along the lines of:

Dear Guest,Just so you are aware, we just quoted your requested dates to three (actual number filled in here) other guest parties in the last week. To ensure you get your dates at property XYZ, you must act promptly to book them before someone else does.Click here to book and secure your dates before they're gone!Sincerely,Your helpful host

 

I realize that this gets in to the territory of email funnels and services like Constant Contact or Mail Chimp, etc. but the data relating to the inquiries is stored in OwnerRez, so I expect it needs to come from here.

Further, Tags for Quotes need to be included in Triggers.

I am aware that this could possibly be accomplished with tags already (I checked and it doesn't look like it. If I'm wrong, I'll update this post.) but a means to classify quotes would be a great feature also, such that Triggers could be based on the classification.

So for example, the above email sample would only go out to those quotes Tagged with a "Booking is Desired" moniker, so it is only sent to those particular inquiries that we the user want to identify as such. Often times requests come in that are a bad fit in the calendar, or not our best guest profile, but likewise, sometimes they come in and they would be 'perfect'; they would perfectly fill an existing gap, the guest would be a great center of influence amongst a group we want to market to, that sort of thing. There should be a means to create email follow-up chains for various quotes that we send out that could dramatically increase our chances of getting bookings.

Finally, ideally the email templates could include Trigger Links or Tag Links IN them as well, so if a guest clicks and replies to a particular email, it changes the Tag setting in OwnerRez, thereby stopping an email chain from going out (and if one wants to get really creative with Trigger programming, could actually start a different one).

Thanks!

 

This is true, Airbnb now supports Short Stay Cleaning fees.  This can be configured in OwnerRez! Here's how:

• For the regular cleaning surcharge, set up the per-stay surcharge with a Booking Criteria of greater than 2 nights.
• For the short-stay cleaning surcharge, set up a per-stay surcharge with a Booking Criteria of 2 nights or less. 

Both surcharges will be pushed to Airbnb and used with bookings of the corresponding durations.

Airbnb requires a Short Stay Cleaning Fee to be lower than your regular cleaning fee - so, you cannot use this as a proxy short-stay surcharge.

More information on common scenarios for surcharges can be found here - https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/common-surcharge-discounts

For some reason, Airbnb seems to think that cleaners charge less for a 2-night stay vs a 4-night stay (spoiler: they don't). So looked at the Airbnb listing - and yes, it is there alright. 

 

you can capture this in a custom field as guests are completing the rental agreement

If you don't mind my asking, how does one do this?

you can capture this in a custom field as guests are completing the rental agreement

I have two different listings at the same house, one listed as a two bedroom, one listed as a three bedroom.  I want the rates for both listings to be the same at all times.

I know there's a "batch copy rate" feature, which is manual and a one-time sync.  Is there a way to automatically mirror the rates from one property to another, so if any changes are made, it's reflected in both listings without the manual batch copy process?

Is there a way to blend it with the cleaning fees for Airbnb? When I blend it for direct quotes it doesn’t show up but cleaning fees are still broken out on Airbnb….

Hi,

This is a great idea, and already possible in some capacity. To clarify we have developed some related code and worked with clients in the past to change the "Comments" field to read as you've requested.

If you'd like to do the same you'd do so by going to Settings > Widgets > select that Booking/Inquiry Widget > click the Change button. Then, scroll down until you see Conversion Tracking > Widget Loaded

You'll then enter this code on line 1 within the "Widget Loaded" field:
 
<script>     $('[for="Comments"]').text('How did you hear about us?'); </script>

If you're having difficulties, please reach out to our helpdesk and we'd be glad to offer support.

~Caleb

We really need this!  Team Access permissions would let us provide granular access where needed (e.g. Messaging is important in my case) rather than full admin access to everything, or ReadOnly access to everything.  This would be very helpful.

Here's more helpful information:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/local-laws-regulations 

We used to push those registration numbers through the API, but Airbnb and Vrbo no longer accept that information from us, so it has been removed from the feed.

In order to get your registration number properly associated with your listing, you'll need to contact Airbnb directly.

Vrbo had been letting hosts add the registration numbers to the "Local Laws" section of each listing (if applicable), but I'm not certain if they're still allowing that or if you now need to contact Vrbo directly the same as you would Airbnb.

If need be, Vrbo can be reached via email at pm-support@vrbo.com, or you can also try calling them at 877-239-2592. Their hours of availability are 9a-5p M-F CST.

I can only see all my bookings for all my properties together on the "booking" tab, but then I can only edit my rates / changeover rules by moving to the "rate calendar" for each individual home without seeing all the homes together. Seeing all the homes is needed to manage my business while I'm setting rates and rules.

Please combine the two so we can see multiple properties in a booking ribbon with booking details shown if you hover, and ALSO see/change the rates, stay reqts and changeover rules in the SAME view.  Potentially you'll need to shorten the ribbon and enlarge the squares to fit more information.

This is needed by folks with multiple properties where we might need to block off dates if one property has a same day turnover and we cannot accommodate more as an example.  Or if we want to raise a rate if all our other homes are booked for same date and there is limited availability for demand thus justifying higher rate.  There are many ways multiple-property managers use data from the entire inventory to decide on terms for individual rentals within the set. 

Going back and forth between bookings and rate calendar is a hassle but do-able with two monitors on a desk.  It is extremely difficult to manage on a mobile device which is where many of us work.

[There is no feature in OR to automatically detect if other properties have same day or close in time turnovers and impose rules on other properties to prevent overwhelming housekeeping which is a limited resource. This would also be a good feature to add - a new rule that you can only have so many turnovers in a day and then it disallows more, or arrivals/departures within a specified number of days.  It would need to impose a block of sorts and send that to the channel calendars, and automatically unblock if there is a cancellation.]

Many locations require a property to be registered, including the one where I work - Galveston, TX.  There is a fee to do so for each property, and the City issues a unique number for each property called a GVR# and it takes the format GVR-x x x x x.  I have placed these in the correct space on my listings in OwnerRez, however, they don't "feed" to other platforms like AirBnB and VRBO.  The platforms will not publish without this number as they, too, are responsible for ensuring home owner / property manager compliance with the regulations of our City.  Wondering if there is a way to have that "feed" when we push a new listing out to the platforms.

I checked with PriceLabs, who mentioned that they do not send LOS (length of stay) pricing to OwnerRez; however PriceLabs does offer a orphan premium option you might use to add on a 1 night stay. They also said that they now have several orphan options, not just one, could that be where the confusion is arising?

PriceLabs seems to indicate you can still add that orphan fee:

Hi Janet,

To clarify to our knowledge Vrbo doesn't have an option of just "pool" through the API, while they do summarize pool amenities to just "pool" on a property  

 
You'll find that the actual type of pool is broken down one layer deeper under amenities.
 

~Caleb

One area that I feel like lacks is just the ability to leave comments in the booking.  There is a comment box in the overview but it is just a text box with no functionality.  It doesn't need to be fancy, but just a chat type option with a chain of messages (leaving the date and the author) would be a significant help to make sure everyone can quickly and easily update the booking with relevant information.  

Does GMB still require a google account in order to leave a review?  Might not be possible if they still do to have a review left on OR to publish there, but maybe with the upcoming integration things may be more relaxed?  Like how VRBO used to be with allowing our direct booking reviews to post there.

Please consider adding the following question to the Widget:

"How did you hear about us?"

This is an invaluable way to find out where our customers are hearing about us. It also allows us to help determine the ROI of our advertising dollars.

I realize this is very much a niche type of request, but we host larger groups of individuals at our vacation property.  In addition to the typical "weekly summer vacation rentals", we host corporate meetings, respite get-aways, car show attendees, church groups and so on.  Certainly, these groups have a single point-of-contact, but I end-up requesting the email address of everyone attending to email them the digital house guide, arrival instructions and departure instructions (e.g., I do not depend on the PoC to distribute everything everyone needs to know).  Is there a way to capture multiple email addresses for a reservation so OR can automatically send triggered emails to multiple people instead of just the PoC?  Thank you!!

I just started doing this and am hoping it will help with bookings. 

 

Can you do this for AirBnb?

Yes! We have a support article that can walk you through how to set that up for yourself - https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/property-photos-rooms

Can you do this for AirBnb?

Not scheduled yet, but thanks for the nudge!

I meant to set 2nd payment to disallow credit card payment on the 2nd payment (if it is in advance) automatically and just send a reminder to pay by check. I can do that now but I would have to manually edit the rules on every advance booking. 

This is already doable, and always has been.

When using the Vrbo API, Vrbo passes the guest's credit card data in when the booking is made.  OwnerRez automatically takes the first payment, typically 50% (sometimes 100% if it's a last-minute booking), schedules the second payment at the appropriate time, and sets up the security deposit hold.

But, that second payment is a "smart" payment - it'll only collect whatever balance is due when it fires.  So, if the guest mails in a check before then, and you manually record that as an offline payment, the balance will be $0 and no second payment will occur.

Or, if you are confident that you'll be getting payment some other way, you can simply delete the second, scheduled payment from the Transactions tab of that Booking.  That leaves it entirely on you to make sure you get that second payment.

Of course, manual payments can be anything, whatever you are willing to accept from the guest - all that matters to OwnerRez is that you record the payment amount you received in Transactions for the Booking.

Vrbo considers API bookings to be handled entirely by OwnerRez - once the booking has been created, you can make any changes you like to it, and Vrbo won't mind.

With credit card costs going up, and more chargebacks than before, it would be nice to have an option to take a deposit (1st payment) only by CC (and that should satisfy vrbo), and make 2nd payment required by check or zelle (aka manual/offline custom instructions) for the bookings X days in advance (example: 60 days or more). 

In that case, we already have CC on file for Sec dep. 

Doable? Thanks