The OwnerRez Blog

I noticed an article in USA Today that I wanted to share with everyone.

Our travel insurance partner, Travel Guard, talks about the victims of the recent Costa Concordia accident and how they're helping the passengers that purchased policies:

"While thousands of evacuated Concordia passengers waited for Costa Cruise Lines to offer assistance, the insurance company helped its customers with their individual requests to relay messages back home, replace ID (for those who left their passports on the ship) and get quickly on flights back home"

They also point out other benefits the passengers will receive if necessary:

"If any of the Travel Guard customers on Concordia had been injured, reimbursement of medical expenses and emergency medical evacuation would have kicked in, Mueller says. The policy also includes $10,000 accidental death and dismemberment insurance."

I'm glad to see Travel Guard leading the way and taking care of their customers with gusto.  This is the kind of customer service we expect from the vendors we partner with.

Remind your guests how important travel insurance can be!

We just released an update that changed how renter agreements are signed.  The update involved two major areas:

1. We removed renter agreement archiving from the quote acceptance process.
2. We added the ability for guests to sign renter agreements after the fact.

Many of you have already noticed these changes and have asked some great questions.  Here's a breakdown of everything that happened.

Removing archiving from the quote acceptance process

Previously, when a guest submitted the quote acceptance form, they had to wait while the renter agreement was digitally signed, turned into a PDF and archived with our storage provider.  This all happened synchronously as one of several steps before they got a confirmation.  In fact, about 75% of the time involved this part of the process.  All told, the guest had to sit and wait a good 5-8 seconds on average for the booking to be finalized.

While the process worked well and didn't cause any specific problems, we've disliked how long it took.  Also, as more vacation rental owners use OwnerRez and the rate of quotes and bookings increases, we are constantly looking for ways we can gain speed as we scale up.

With this update, we've removed the renter agreement steps out of the process entirely.  Now, when a guest accepts the quote, the process goes right to the final steps of collecting the payment and saving the booking record.  A few minutes later, after the guest has left, the renter agreement is signed, PDF'd and archived by a separate background processes.

This change greatly increased the speed of quote acceptance and removes potential obstacles from a scaling point of view as OwnerRez continues to grow.

Signing renter agreements manually

Being able to have guests sign renter agreements manually (i.e. not as a part of the quote acceptance process but in a separate single form) has always been a highly-requested feature by OwnerRez users.

This is for an obvious reason: if you create a manual booking, there is never an automatic point where the guest has to sign an agreement.  Also, sometimes you need a guest to sign a new agreement after you've made updates.

Well, now you can.  You can send the guest a link which will open a public form with options to sign the renter agreement.  You can even do this for bookings that have a renter agreement signed and archived already.

Let's see it in action.

Navigate to one of your bookings and click on the Legal tab.  If the booking already has a signed renter agreement in place, the page will show you the details with an option, as before, to open the archived PDF.

If the booking was created manually, you'll see a blank form telling you that no agreement has been signed.

Regardless of which version you see, at the bottom of the page there will be an "Email a link to the guest" option.  Click on that link and an email form will open.

A default message will be pre-filled for you, but you have the option of changing the message just like every other email form in the system.

You'll notice that the default message includes a link to a public form that the guest can use to sign their agreement.  If you wish to see what the guest will see, open that link in your own browser.  You'll notice that the public form is very similar in design and layout to all the other OwnerRez public forms.

Underneath the renter agreement body, the guest is presented with several fields that show them what they're signing.  They are then free to sign the agreement as they choose.

Once the guest has submitted the form, the signing, PDF'ing and archiving process is exactly the same as the quote acceptance process.  After a few minutes, the background process will finalize everything and you (and the guest) will receive confirmation emails.

We have a number of ideas in the pipeline about how to improve the renter agreement process even more - such as allowing you to upload files that the guest faxes/emails to you - but we're also interested in your feedback.

Please let us know what you like or dislike about these changes and what you'd like to see in the future.

We recently added inquiry integration for ArrangeYourVacation.com.  Here's how you get your ArrangeYourVacation.com inquiries show up in OwnerRez.

I've covered how to find your @inquiryspot.com email addresses in OwnerRez in previous blog posts so I'll skip over that part and get right to the meat.

First, login to your ArrangeYourVacation.com account.

After logging in, click on the big "Rentals" icon right in the middle of the page.  This will take you to a list of your properties.  Click on the "Edit Rental" link on the property you want to integrate.

Once the property details load, you'll see a row of links for the different property attributes you can change.  Click on the "Contacts" link over on the right.

ArrangeYourVacation.com allows you to send your inquiries to multiple contacts.  Make sure that at least one contact uses the @inquiryspot.com email address so that inquiries get sent to OwnerRez.

And as always, be sure to send a test inquiry to yourself by opening your property listing on ArrangeYourVacation.com and filling out the inquiry form.  When it arrives in OwnerRez, you'll know the integration is complete.

We recently added inquiry integration for GetAwayDigs.com, so I wanted to take a few minutes to explain how to make your GetAwayDigs.com inquiries show up in OwnerRez.

Several previous blog posts explained how to find your @inquiryspot.com email addresses in OwnerRez so we'll skip over that part and get right to the meat.

First, login to your GetAwayDigs.com account.

After logging in, you'll see your properties listed on the GetAwayDigs.com control panel homepage.  You may have to scroll down a bit to see the properties.  Click on the "Basic Info" link for the property you want to integrate.

Scroll to the bottom of the property details page, and you'll see a Contact Information section.  Put your @inquiryspot.com email address in the "Email" field.

Clicking the "Next" button will save your changes.

As always, be sure to send a test inquiry to yourself by opening your property listing on GetAwayDigs.com and filling out the inquiry form.  When it arrives in OwnerRez, you'll know the integration is complete.

FreeVacationRentalSite.com is another listing site that we recently added inquiry integration for.  Here is a quick walkthrough on how to make your FreeVacationRentalSite.com inquiries show up in OwnerRez.

I'll assume you already know how to find the @inquiryspot.com email address for each of your properties in OwnerRez.  If not, look at the last several blog posts.

First, head on over to FreeVacationRentalSite.com and login.

After logging in, you'll see your properties listed on the FreeVacationRentalSite.com control panel homepage.  Click on the property that you want to integrate.

Scroll to the bottom of the property details page, and you'll see a Contact Information section.  Click the "Edit Contact Info" button.

You'll see a "Contact Email" field which contains the email address that FreeVacationRentalSite.com sends inquiries to for this property.  Put your @inquiryspot.com email address in that field.

Remember to click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom right of the form.

And as always, be sure to send a test inquiry to yourself by opening your property listing on FreeVacationRentalSite.com and filling out the inquiry form.  When it arrives in OwnerRez, you'll know the integration is complete.