Latest Activity...
Hi Ed,
I've struggled with this too. But now that I'm much more clear with my guests that they can purchase travel insurance in the event that they need to cancel, they know that the ball is in their court. I find that kind but firm communication is what wins the game. Guests who don't like my policies can book somewhere else. I don't need the headaches.
Perhaps the issue is that one should have the feature of being able to assign properties to groups, and custom fields can be set for groups, which when a new one is entered for a group, automatically overrides all of the custom field entries for each property in that group. In this way, custom fields can be assigned in bulk, and properties can be assigned to as many different groups as necessary, providing all of the flexibility one might need to do what you are requesting.
Thanks Steven that will do it.
Alece see this previous Forum Post where Ken suggests a workaround for adding a code as a % of rent.
There's a workaround for this case: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/discount-codes#position -- use percent of subtotal and configure positioning to make sure the discount comes before surcharges so that it only applies to rent.
Based on availability I'd like to send a notification so that we opt in/out of pest control treatment that day. This applies to maintenance days, lawn care, and other servics as well.
What is requested is a compound query that allows me to combine into one. This currently can be done with 2 triggers but unfortunately, we cant compare the trigger results to each other.
ACTION
Occurs a) event b) time
Time a) #, Days, <Before/After> <Booking ...> option
Send Template custom template
Add a conjunctive AND/OR to the code
and a 2nd ACTION
Occurs a) event b) time
Time a) #, Days, <Before/After> <Booking ...> option
Send Template custom template
Alternatively, if the option for the trigger was date-based. Instead of setting the window relative to booking we have an option to be relative to a <Date>. If <Date> was selected an option to select hours between <beginning> and <ending>.
I'd like to check to see if a property is occupied or not on a specific date. I find I can use the trigger tools and bookings to do anything around a single property but I can't figure out how to determine what's going on between 2 bookings. In other words, if booking A checks out Monday and Booking B checks in Thursday I want to notify pest control to service. But if Booking A checks out Tuesday I can't tell if Booking B also check in Tuesday.
Problem 2: Taking the scenario in step 1 a step further, I'd like to find all properties available on Wednesday and prepare a single unified email to the pest control service saying Please service units A, C, D. DO NOT service units B & E.
Scott,
What's your take on trip insurance? do you get a lot of guests to purchase it? If so, I'd love it if you could share your pitch to guests. Also, could you comment on those guests that do cancel and their reason for cancellation is not one that is reimbursed. How often does that come back to you?
Cancellations are the one area that causes me the most frustration. My position is that a guest can or buy trip insurance or self-insure and save the approx 12%. Guests tend to think that the host should eat the cost which drives me nuts.
I've written a nice write-up explaining our business model is different than a hotel and more similar to a cruise ship. Motel/hotels get 50% of their bookings on the day of stay. No one is going to drive by my place on the day of stay and book it. Guests tend to think hosts can put the days back and use them another time (works for a hotel because someone else uses them). My position is that once booked a lack of stay is between the guest and their trip insurance. YET every time, I'm in the middle defending that they can't rebook another time and NO I'm not going to give them their money back, and I still have to pay my full mortgage even when the place wasn't used for 1/2 the days. If the guest does release their days and I can rebook, I do refund 80% of what I recover as I do not want to profit on a guest's misfortune.
Thanks for that clarification, Ken!
It's actually a bit more complicated than that - we can't necessarily always tell whether insurance can or cannot be purchased, because of some geographic and nationality limitations that OR may not know enough details to properly judge. In addition, we don't always accurately know whether travel insurance has been purchased, because it is also possible for guest to purchase it directly, or for OR servers to not be properly notified. So, "Available" and "Not Available" are our best guess, but not guaranteed to be accurate. For this reason, we're hesitant to add a trigger dependent on not-always-certain data. We are continuing to work with RentalGuardian to improve the API and overall process to make this possible.
Hi Ed, that's a thought. Hopefully someone from OR can elaborate what "Available" and "Not Available" mean.
Hi Scott,
I'm just getting the feel of everything so I dont know for sure. However, I would think that the <Available> option would mean 2 things: 1) Trip insurance is offered. 2) That guest hasn't purchased trip insurance. If you bought insurance then it is no longer available. Otherwise, it implies that you can purchase several trip insurance policies against the same booking days.
I want to set one custom field that will apply to several properties. This isn't currently an option in your system, This should not be hard to do as you already have the code to pick out specific properties.
Here are use cases, for example:
Trash Collection
Neighborhood amenities
Disclaimers
General Guest Instructions
Specific Owner Rules applied to an owner's properties
As it is you need to add a field into each property which completely defeats the purpose.
From your tech
"As the type of field code needed for what you're hoping to accomplish is a property type field code, our system currently has no way to automatically batch update the custom fields for any properties of your choosing to match the custom field of the 1st property you configure that custom field on.
Thusly, manually configuring the custom field per property is necessary"
The following non-editable "Grace Period" appears on a payment form when a guests selects "I will send a check in the mail".
"The security deposit for this booking is due by Aug 21, 2024. If it is not received by then, your booking may be canceled. If you think your security deposit may not get to us in time, please contact us and let us know so that your booking isn't canceled. It it your responsibility to make sure that we have received security deposit by the due date which includes any time that it takes for the check to clear with our bank."
Besides the grammatical errors in the paragraph, the bolded statement is unnecessary. With that statement in there, how does an owner retain the right to cancel a reservation when a check isn't received by the due date? The bolded statement is completely unnecessary wiggle room. Owner Rez should remove the bolded statement to be sure renters understand an owner has the authority to cancel the reservation if the check is late.
Thanks Caleb.
Hi Jason,
Can you send us an email with the issue you ran into? You can also submit a support request through your portal and identify the reservation that was affected.
It'll help our team to troubleshoot much quicker.
The Blacklist Lock Code is a great idea. I can talk to our developers about this. You can submit a feature request or device integration request using our link below as well:
https://www.jervis.systems/feature-request
Regards,
Bobby Varghese
Jervis Systems
Yes yes yes! It is so needed to be able to apply a Discount Code to rent only!
It would be incredibly helpful to have a Notes tab available within each API integration. Each channel often has nuances that we need to make note of, such as regarding the setup, how payments are handled, etc. There is currently nowhere within OwnerRez to store internal notes in relation to the API integration channels. Similar to bookings and owners, etc., it would be so helpful to have a Notes tab added in HERE to keep track of those things:
I want to set one custom field that will apply to several properties. This isn't currently an option in your system, This should not be hard to do as you already have the code to pick out specific properties.
Here are use cases, for example:
Trash Collection
Neighborhood amenities
Disclaimers
General Guest Instructions
Specific Owner Rules applied to an owner's properties
As it is you need to add a field into each property which completely defeats the purpose.
From your tech
"As the type of field code needed for what you're hoping to accomplish is a property type field code, our system currently has no way to automatically batch update the custom fields for any properties of your choosing to match the custom field of the 1st property you configure that custom field on.
Thusly, manually configuring the custom field per property is necessary"
It would be nice to be able to set up discounts for military, first responders, friends and family, etc, and have the discount apply only to the nightly rate. My cleaning expenses, linen expenses, etc are fixed, and currently in this very weak month, my fixed costs are up to 1/2 of my total bill. A 1 day rental when the nightly rate matches fixed rate fees given a 10% discount ends up being 20% off the nightly rate. THERE is no simple workaround for this. If they book 2 days it's an effective 15% off the nightly rate. 4 days 12.5%, etc.
Additionally, it would be nice to be able to exclude certain days. weekends are easy to book. I'd love to offer discount on weekdays (Sunday-Th) only. Therefore it would be nice to be able to have discount applied or not by calendar dates.
Currently, Rate Adjustments are set in the <API Integration> under the <Rate Adjustment> field. As such this precludes the OwnerRez Hosted Website. I request that <Rate Adjustment> be added as an option to the Hosted Website. The field could be found in API Integration so that it's adjusted when API integrated rates are adjusted or under the Hosted Website tab.
The workaround is to configure the dynamic pricing module, DPM, for the website pricing and adjust all others relative to the OR hosted website. There are several negatives to this. First I'm more comfortable with pricing for one of the channels. Making adjustments so that they can be scaled back, introduces more chance for mistakes. Second, if all channels and the website have a rate adjustment field it makes it very simple to make a quick shift in pricing.
How about for Signal as well, which is far more reliable for privacy and has more privacy features than WhatsApp?
There is a trigger for Travel Insurance Purchased, Available, and Not Available, but not for Not Purchased.
Adding the latter will allow me to send a message to only my guests who don't purchase the insurance a Cancellation Policy/Travel Insurance reminder when they book.
I suspected that might be an issue. I guess first step is to ask them to add it and see if they can do that in the next year?
Ah, so many spam inquiries on Vrbo (my office will mail you a check.) It would be nice to be able to mark as spam, but thus far it is not supported via the API.
Hi Serg,
I wanted to jump in here and provide a potential alternative option in the meantime. Have you considered setting up third party alerts for your cleaners yet?
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/third-party-communications-options#third-party-alerts
This option would generally provide the number of guests visiting to the cleaner in the alert, see below for an example of one of those alerts.
Month or year view of your calendar. Scroll down and there is two options: use property color or color by listing site. On the phone, it looks like this:
This can only be done by selecting the "Year" view of your calendar, an it doesn't keep this setting enabled. It toggles off this setting when you refresh the page. I think what most of us are looking for is an option to view our "Month" view of the calendar and easily be able to distinguish which booking sites the bookings are through at a glance. Otherwise you have to hover your cursor over each booking to see this information.
Thank you! I can now see in "Year" View, which is somewhat helpful. You are right, we all would like to see this in monthly view, and/or throught all of the calendar views as a whole.
Go to property, then general, then change calendar color
Yes, this changes ALL of my bookings to the same color... whateve I choose...
Hmmm,
At the bottom of your calendar, switch from "use property color " to "color by listing site"
Hmmm, I dont have this?
Oh nevermind, I now see it in the "Year" View as the other poster commented.
Vrbo has a feature for reporting an inquiry as spam, would be great if we could do that in the inbox in OR (and have it send that response back via the channel it came from). I know not every channel will have this feature, not even sure you can get at it from Vrbo's API, but if you can... would be better than my having to go over to the Vrbo site to report an inquiry as spam.
This can only be done by selecting the "Year" view of your calendar, an it doesn't keep this setting enabled. It toggles off this setting when you refresh the page. I think what most of us are looking for is an option to view our "Month" view of the calendar and easily be able to distinguish which booking sites the bookings are through at a glance. Otherwise you have to hover your cursor over each booking to see this information.
I would also like to have this feature. Since AirBnb is blocking emailing the guests I would like to send a channel message an hour or two after booking advising them to purchase travel insurance.
