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Rate & Fee Differences

Our Channel Management feature is extremely powerful and can greatly simplify your channel advertising. Learn how it works by reading our Channel Management Overview article.  The most powerful part of our Channel Management is the API Integrations we have with certain channel partners.

However, each API Integrated channel has different sorts of rates and fees that they accept. Every channel supports nightly rates, but some also support additional fees, length of stay discounts, etc.

Difference Table

See the table below for a list of rates/fees that we can push to each API integrated channel. Note the info bubbles on some channels -- some things we can't push but can be configured on the channel side. Look below the table for more information about each function.

Channel Rate Discounts Fees Taxes
Nightly Week/Month Last Minute LOS Guests Cleaning Pets Other
Vrbo Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Airbnb Yes No Yes   Yes Yes Yes Yes   Yes   Yes  
Booking.com Yes No Yes   No   Yes No   No No   No  
FloridaRentals.com Yes Yes FloridaRentals displays rates to the guest, but you'll get a normal OwnerRez inquiry and you will create an OwnerRez quote with full charges calculated out of OwnerRez.

There are two main categories of channels when it comes to rates -- those that do nightly rates and Length Of Stay (LOS) discounts and those that do night, week, month rates. We recommend using nightly rates and Length Of Stay (LOS) discounts only -- for channels that do week/month rates instead of LOS discounts, we will transform LOS discounts into those week/month rates. We do not transform week/month rates into LOS discounts.

Automatic mode surcharges & discounts will be applied based on the listing site criteria. Any surcharge or discount applied Manually, Optionally, or By Code will be ignored and never sent to a channel.

Targeting Surcharges & Discounts by Channel

You can target surcharges and discounts to specific channels (or to everything but specific channels) by using the Listing Site criteria.

Supported channel listing site criteria: Vrbo, Airbnb, Booking.com, FloridaRentals.com

The "Contains a Holiday: No" booking field criteria is supported by channels to an extent. One thing to note: with Channels, you can't do "not these dates" -- you can only do "just these dates" so the discount would still apply on a booking that laps over holidays, just not for the whole thing.

Also, if you're trying to target holiday rates to channels, you can still use seasons for that.

OwnerRez user-set non-taxable surcharges will work for direct bookings, however be warned that most API integrated listing sites, such as Airbnb and Vrbo, do NOT honor those surcharges as non-taxable. 

Per-Channel Details and Idiosyncrasies

Each channel does things a bit differently. This section covers the specifics of what's supported by each one and how to configure them. We attempt to make things transparently work across as many channels as possible with the simplest configuration, but some channels just don't support certain concepts or criteria.

Vrbo

Vrbo has the richest system to describe nightly rates, discounts, and fees. They do not support week/month rates but do support Last Minute discounts and LOS discounts.

Nightly Rates: We will send the exact rate you have configured in OwnerRez for each night (with any rate adjuster from the channel settings)

Discounts: Last Minute discounts, LOS discounts, and pretty much any other type of discount is supported. Vrbo supports up to 15 different discounts. You can do per-night or per-stay discounts.

Surcharges: Guest fee, Cleaning fee, Pet fee, Refundable Damage Deposit, other fees -- and pretty much any type of fee is supported.

  • Vrbo supports up to 15 different surcharges of each type, including per-night or per-stay fees.
  • NOTE: Vrbo only gives the guest a "I have a pet checkbox" so it'll come across as 0 or 1 pet. If they have more than 1 pet and you charge per pet, put that in your house rules and adjust the charges after booking accordingly. 
  • Vrbo does not support applying "Percent of subtotal" fees to taxes. It will only apply to the rent and other surcharges regardless of the "Place this below tax line items" setting.
  • The surcharge fee type displayed on Vrbo is controlled by the Surcharge Category and Description fields in OwnerRez.

Taxes: All taxes you configure in OwnerRez (that are applicable to the Vrbo channel) will apply. You are responsible for remitting them.

For the purposes of surcharge taxability, you can only have one taxability setting per category of surcharge. For example, you can have a taxable guest fee and a non-taxable cleaning fee. But you cannot have a taxable cleaning fee and also a non-taxable cleaning fee.

Supported Criteria & Multipliers: 

The following multipliers and booking criteria will pass through to Vrbo for surcharges. Any criteria or multiplier not on the list will not be used.

  • Standard Criteria: Property, Season, Listing Site
  • Multiplier: Guests, Adults, Children, Pets. Only supports multiplying for every 1 item (not every 2 etc). Discounts don't support multipliers.
  • Arrival Days From Now
  • Number Of Nights
  • Guests, Adults, Children: You can use any of these criteria but only one of them
  • Booked Date
  • Arrival Date
  • Departure Date (not recommended as it is treated as stay criteria, see below)
  • Booked Month of the Year
  • Arrival Month of the Year
  • Departure Month of the Year (Not recommended as it is treated as stay criteria, see below)

Quirks

  • Not Equal To criteria is not supported
  • Percentage discounts will only target rent, not other surcharges/discounts regardless of the percent of rent or percent of subtotal setting in OwnerRez -- Vrbo only supports percent of rent discounts
  • Percentage multipliers are not supported
  • Month of Year criteria can wrap around the year end. If you want to target Arriving October to February, you could do:
    Arrival Month of the Year >= 10
    Arrival Month of the Year <= 2
  • Departure Date/Departure Month of the Year: Vrbo doesn't have a specific departure date criteria, so this will go to the "stay dates contain" criteria.  Note that this can mean that the surcharge/discount may work very differently in Vrbo than elsewhere.
Using Departure Date/Departure Month of the Year is not recommended to be used as a Booking Criteria for Vrbo as it is treated as a "stay dates contain" criteria. If Departure Date/Departure Month of the Year is used at all, OwnerRez recommends that it is the only Booking Criteria used, and not used in combination with any Arrival Date Booking Criteria.
  • Multiple criteria can work together (i.e. you could have Arrival Days From Now and Number Of Guests), but remember that the criteria must all apply (AND). For example you could do these together:
    Arrival Days From Now >= 5
    Arrival Days From Now < 8

    But not:
    Arrival Days From Now = 5
    Arrival Days From Now = 6

    Because the combination of criteria will never apply.
  • Vrbo evaluates based on ANY date criteria matching, not ALL as OwnerRez does. We recommend using a single date range field, like Arrival Date >= 1/1/2022 and Arrival Date <= 12/31/2022, then it will match if either of those criteria matches rather than requiring both to match.
  • Percent of Subtotal type surcharges only support number of nights and stay dates criteria. They don't support nights booked in advance, booked date, arrival/departure date, or number of guests criteria.
  • Surcharges or discounts that exist with "Contains a Holiday" booking field criteria and result in greater than fifty holiday date ranges will not all be recognized. Vrbo only supports the first 50 date ranges.
  • Arrival/Departure Day of the Week is not supported.

Airbnb

Airbnb supports nightly rates and some specific surcharges and discounts. See also the Airbnb section of the Length of Stay (LOS) Discounts support article for more information. 

Nightly Rates: We will send the rate you have configured in OwnerRez for each night, combined with any rate adjuster from the channel settings, and also combined with any per-night surcharge or discount that applies to that single night. Airbnb doesn't support rich surcharge/discount criteria, so instead we roll as much as possible into the nightly rates. OwnerRez pushes updates approximately every 24 hours as well as 15 minutes after any other changes are made to keep them up to date as date criteria adjusts.  By its nature, this means that daily rates displayed in Airbnb will often not be exactly the same as those displayed elsewhere, but the general "gist" of your rate setup should be maintained.

OwnerRez auto calculates your rates as either the minimum or maximum price in your availability window and users can choose either minimum or maximum on their Settings > Pricing Preferences page. Selecting the Min of nightly rates can be better for marketing if users have rates fully populated and ensure that with a maximum of days in advance booking window rule.

Channel Default Rates

Discounts: Per-stay LOS discounts are supported with date range and number of nights greater than criteria.

  • Airbnb only supports percentage LOS discounts, no flat per night or per stay.
  • Airbnb also only supports integer percentages, so any discount will be rounded down to the closest percent and any surcharge will be rounded up to the closest percent.
  • Any other discounts like Last Minute discounts must be per-stay percentage or per-night, with criteria that allows them to match a night. If they meet those requirements, the discount will be applied as an adjustment to the nightly rate.
  • You cannot combine types of discounts -- last minute discounts will always apply regardless of number of nights criteria. LOS discounts do not support days from now criteria. Airbnb does not support flat amount LOS discounts -- neither per-night or per-stay.
  • Airbnb percentage discounts will always be percent of rent. They do not support percent of subtotal (i.e. discounting other fees).

Surcharges: A limited set of per-stay surcharges are supported. Additional Guest fees are the only per-night surcharge supported (and, can't be per-stay). Any other per-night surcharges must be per-night or per-stay percentage, with criteria that allows them to match a night. If they meet those requirements, the surcharge will be applied as an adjustment to the nightly rate.

For details on surcharge configuration, see the Airbnb Surcharges FAQ entry.

Taxes: Taxes can be remitted by Airbnb or remitted by you depending on what Airbnb supports in your area. In some places Airbnb lets you add or override the taxes they collect but in others the only thing you can do for additional taxes is to include in your nightly rate.

For details on surcharge configuration, see the Airbnb Taxes FAQ entry.

NOTE: Airbnb only supports flat per guest, flat per night, flat per guest and night, and percent per reservation taxes. They do not support flat per stay taxes.

NOTE: Airbnb does not support future dated rate changes -- they only support one effective rate, so the rate effective as of now will be pushed.

Unsupported Criteria

  • Arrival/departure date criteria is used to form an applicable range for dates of stay, but won't exclude bookings lapping over the beginning or end of the time period.
  • Day of week/month
  • Date Booked
  • Length of stay discounts only support minimum-nights criteria and date-range criteria. They do not support "number of days from now" criteria. 
  • Length of stay discounts can only be percentage amounts. They do not support per-night or per-stay flat amounts. 
  • Last minute discounts only support "number of days from now" and date-range criteria. criteria. They do not support "number of nights" criteria.
  • Nights criteria is only supported for Length of stay discounts (not any other discount or any surcharge) and maximum-nights criteria is not supported even for LOS discounts.
  • Pets is supported only for the Pet fee.  Also, Pet fees can only be per-stay, not per-night, and only one fee will be charged regardless of the number of pets coming.
  • Guests/Adults is supported only for the Guest fee.  Child is not supported, because Airbnb doesn't distinguish children.
  • Guests/Adults/Pets is not supported for any other surcharges or discounts

Booking.com

Booking.com supports updating nightly rates and a per-guest fee via API. Any other fee, discount, or tax has to be configured on Booking.com and then it will come through to OwnerRez as part of a booking.

Nightly Rates: We will send the rate you have configured in OwnerRez for each night combined with any rate adjuster from the channel settings and also combined with any per-night surcharge or discount that applies to that single night. Booking.com doesn't support rich surcharge/discount criteria so instead we roll as much as possible into the nightly rates and push updates every 24 hours to keep them up to date as date criteria adjusts

Discounts: No per-stay discounts are supported. Any other discounts like Last Minute discounts must be per-night or per-stay percentage, with criteria that allows them to match a night. If they meet those requirements, the discount will be applied as an adjustment to the nightly rate.

Surcharges: Only a per-guest fee is supported. All other fees must be configured on the Booking.com side. When you configure a taxable fee in Booking.com, make sure to set it taxable on Booking.com so they will send the correct tax to OwnerRez. If you don't see an option for taxability, contact Booking.com support and they'll be able to make the change for you.

Taxes: Taxes must be configured on the Booking.com side. Booking.com passes back a total tax amount to OwnerRez and we will split that total among the taxes you have configured in OwnerRez. Since booking.com doesn't have a charge type of "Tax", we look for charges sent from booking.com with the word "tax" or "vat" in the description to find the tax total.

Unsupported Criteria

  • Arrival/departure date criteria is used to form an applicable range for dates of stay but won't exclude bookings lapping over the beginning or end
  • Booked
  • Maximum nights criteria is not supported
  • Guests/Adults is supported only for the Guest fee
  • Guests/Adults/Pets is not supported for any other surcharges or discounts