When guests book using an OwnerRez Hosted Website or your own website using OwnerRez widgets, they are taken through a checkout process that automatically collects their email and requires them to sign your legal rental agreement.
However, when guests book on a major listing site like Vrbo or Airbnb, of course, they don't go through this process. You have to do it another way.
If you haven't already, read the Renter Agreements Overview support article. If not, go back and read that first.
Channel Bookings
Hosts know the importance of a signed renter agreement, which provides clear terms and mutual protection and ensures a smooth and enjoyable experience for both guests and hosts in their short-term vacation rental properties.
Requesting your channel booking guests to sign your renter agreement may require a bit more effort on your part as the host initially, but it is definitely achievable.
A couple of obstacles to obtaining a signed renter agreement from your channel booking guests include the following.
- Many listing channels (e.g., Airbnb, Booking.com, etc.) use a platform email or proxy email address like "joe.blow.12345@messages.airbnb.com" or "joe.blow.12345@messages.booking.com. These platform/proxy email addresses aren't real. If you send messages to them, your message will be collected by the channel, stripped, re-formatted, and displayed on the channel's message platform in various ways that typically don't work well for email.
- If you are API connected with Airbnb, Vrbo, and HomeToGo, we recommend that you specifically state in your House Rules that your guests are required to sign your rental agreement. This is located in the API settings. If a guest refuses to sign, they are violating your House Rule, and you can cancel their booking without penalty.
- Some email systems (e.g., Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) may have additional security settings that may prevent clickable links to your renter agreement in email messages from unknown senders.
- Vrbo continues to provide OwnerRez users with Vrbo guest contact information, email addresses, and phone numbers...for now. As long as you already have a Reminder to Guest to Sign Rental Agreement email template and trigger set up, you should be good to go.
Request That Your Channel Guest Sign Your Renter Agreement
While OwnerRez includes a default Request Renter Agreement for Channel Bookings via Channel Message and trigger for all new Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo API connections, we also have detailed instructions, several message template examples, and trigger examples in the As Soon as a Booking Occurs section of the Trigger Examples support article.
Channel Bridge
If you are getting bookings from Airbnb/Vrbo using an iCal calendar import and the Channel Bridge, no email address is provided via iCal. But when you run Channel Bridge, it will obtain and populate the email address if available.
If you are using Channel Bridge, the "Send Create Triggers" checkbox is checked by to send your trigger by default.
