There is nothing like a dream to create the future.
Victor Hugo's quote underscores the significance of having a compelling vision and setting ambitious goals to drive your success in the vacation rental industry. We strive to be an essential partner in fulfilling your dreams. By automating and streamlining your vacation rental business using OwnerRez (and our integrated partners), you can focus on envisioning the perfect stay for your guests by providing exceptional hospitality, personalized touches, and memorable moments that will create a loyal customer base and drive repeat bookings. After all, your success is our success!
So dream on by reading on... which details some much anticipated upcoming features and our latest product update from the April 12th release with 17 updates!
Upcoming Features
For quite some time, we have all been dreaming about native Vrbo Messaging and Airbnb Transactions data coming into OwnerRez automatically, haven't we? Well, both of those dreams are coming to reality. Here's a quick update on both!
Airbnb Transactions and Deposits
Coming soon - if you are connected via API with Airbnb, upon release, you will no longer have to run Channel Bridge to bring in payment and refund settlement data going forward. When an Airbnb Booking is created in OwnerRez, we will query the Transactions API and add payments on the booking for when they will be released to your bank by Airbnb, and thus the total owed will be reflected accordingly. Also, like OwnerRez already does for payment methods Stripe and Lynnbrook, OwnerRez will automatically create Deposits for those Airbnb settlements. Development is complete and is very close to release!
Vrbo Messaging
We're excited to share that we are actively developing native Vrbo Messaging. Vrbo helped fulfill our dreams of being able to provide native (i.e., built-in) Vrbo messaging in a way that is robust and dependable. To give you a general sense, it will be much like Airbnb's messaging inside OwnerRez. It will require being API-connected to utilize Vrbo messaging. It will still take us a bit to get things rounded out, but in this release, we were able to lay the groundwork to get things ready to go. Stay tuned to the blog for further details!
New Features
TikTok Added as a Social Network Link Under Theming
Calling all vacation rental TikTokers! Due to increasing user demand, we added TikTok as a social network option under theming. Users can navigate to Settings > Theming > Change to add their TikTok profile account to their OwnerRez account.
Learn more by reading our Theming support article.
Turno Now FREE For All OwnerRez Users
If you missed the news, all OwnerRez customers can use Turno's industry-leading cleaning and turnover management software for FREE! Turno (formerly TurnoverBnB) connects vacation rental hosts with local, vetted STR cleaning professionals to simplify and automate cleaning schedules, communications, payments, and more. Please note that processing fees will still be charged when using services by Marketplace cleaners, but there is no obligation to use the Marketplace. You can use your own cleaner too! If your OwnerRez and Turno accounts are connected, your Turno subscription fee will be waived.
Check out yesterday's Turno (formerly TurnoverBnB) FREE For All OwnerRez Users blog post to learn more!
Enhancements & Tweaks
New-User Setup Wizard Now Asks What Software They Currently Use
Changing Property Management Software (PMS) can be daunting, but OwnerRez strives to support our new users by making that process as simple and painless as possible. As part of the new-user onboarding process, we ask users to select what software (if any) they are currently using. This helps the OwnerRez Engagement Team know how to tailor outreach accordingly.
Have a friend that is searching for a new Property Management Software (PMS)? Be sure to send them links to our Why OwnerRez? and Reviews pages and your own OwnerRez Affiliate Link!
Bug Fixes
Allow BUS Access for Quote-Based Channels Like GoLightly. OwnerRez users were experiencing difficulties providing complete quotes to prospective guests for GoLightly and other first-class channels. We corrected this bug to allow BUS (a facet of computer architecture that transmits and shares data throughout the computer and between devices) access for all first-class channels.
Allow HTMLish in Contact Us Form. Users were receiving errors when adding some HTML-like characters in the body of the OwnerRez Contact Us form. This bug has been fixed to allow users to add/paste HTML attributes and validate those HTML-like characters to the body (only) of the contact form.
Back Channel Taxes Out of Channel Bridge Vrbo Refunds on Canceled. We realized that Vrbo reports with refunds on canceled bookings where Vrbo was remitting taxes were including taxes in the refund amount while the payment had not included the taxes, leading to the refund being recorded inaccurately. OwnerRez now detects taxes for canceled refunds and will deduct the Vrbo remitted tax from the refund amount.
Change Booking.com to Push Availability Starting Yesterday at Property Time Zone. We were receiving multiple 500 internal server errors from Booking.com. OwnerRez corrected this bug by pushing Booking.com availability starting yesterday at the property time zone, which we used to do (and still do on other channels) to ensure no date or time zone issues arose.
Check the Right Timestamps on Layout Push Service. OwnerRez detected some timestamp inconsistencies and has added additional timestamp validation to our Layout Push Service that provides the data about a given URL/page request in the form of a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), a lightweight data-interchange format object.
Fix CSS Style on Hosted Carousel. After a recent update where we corrected OwnerRez Hosted Websites photo captions using <h1> tags, we discovered that photo captions were not utilizing the heading style from the site (because they weren't using a header tag anymore). This bug was fixed to still apply the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) heading style regardless of the header tag style.
Fix Error on Blog Post Grid on Hosted Site When Lots of Long Blog Posts. An OwnerRez user encountered an issue where both their OwnerRez hosted public website went down, and they could not access the administrative site for their blog. We determined that we had a sorting issue due to the blog post content caused by a large amount of content sorting. We have amended this to be handled appropriately.
Fix Error on Reviews Import With No Listing Site. Users encountered errors when importing reviews with no attributed listing site recorded in the import file. This bug has been corrected and review imports will now accept files with no attributed listing site recorded or is null.
Fix Error When Publishing an Airbnb Listing That Already Has Address Locked, But We Thought It Was a Brand New Listing. Airbnb doesn't allow changing a property's physical address on a listing after it is published. We encountered an edge case where we didn't correctly track an existing listing as having been published (because Airbnb doesn't tell us when a channel is initially connected), so the sync was trying to update the address, causing an error. Now we detect that error, mark the listing as having been published and stop trying to update the address.
Handle Empty Tags Column on Booking/Guest Import. After the last update, users were experiencing import errors when they attempted to import Booking/Guest information that contained null (or empty) tag column information. This bug has been fixed so that users can easily import Booking/Guest information regardless of whether they have tags.
Longer Timeout on Channel Bridge for Vrbo Payment Reports. Users were experiencing frustrating timeouts while attempting to complete a Vrbo payment data Channel Bridge (CB) process. OwnerRez has corrected this issue by adjusting the expected time to process and complete these lengthy Vrbo payment data CB imports.
Method to Get Stripe Bank Details Without Extra Permissions. OwnerRez was having difficulty pulling necessary Stripe deposit details without additional permissions. This bug has been fixed to not keep asking for additional permissions when that really wasn't the issue. We now return any bank details Stripe gives us with best effort. If un available, we tell the user so on the deposit instead of asking for permissions again and again.
