Experience the difference of "Elite".

Ability to immediately send an email to all current and future guests within a specific date range

Status: Requested 11 Votes
Lisa B
Nov 29, 2021 2:20 PM
Joined Apr, 2021 8 posts

This weekend new Covid Regulations were announced that go into effect one week from today. I needed a way to immediately email all our current guests (who will still be here when the new regulations take effect) and all future guests who will be staying with us between the regulation start date and 30 days after.

Currently this is not possible in OR, but I feel this is critical feature for a vacation rental management software to have, as I can think of many reasons where PM would need to contact current and future guests to inform them of urgent information. For example:

Forrest Fires
Road Closures
Landslides
Hurricanes
Covid Regulations
Wildlife warnings (Bears, etc.)

I completely understand why OR does not want to become an email marketing software but I do feel there needs to be some capability for immediate communication with current and future guests.

A new trigger option that worked something like this might do the trick:

Send message immediately to "All Guests" staying between "enter date range" if the following criteria are met "Tags, Status, etc. as with current trigger criteria options.

I understand I could export all the guests and send this message via Mail Chimp or another email marketing software but in emergency situations this is just too time consuming and most of the situations I can think of for needing this capability would be constantly changing requiring follows to be sent to let guests know of the status.

Paul W
Nov 30, 2021 5:33 PM
OR Team Member Joined Jun, 2009 825 posts

Hi Lisa, great suggestion and we agree. We've talked about having a simple process for this like... booking list view > filter to find range of bookings > batch button > email > open window > select template or compose > send. Hugely useful no doubt. The problem is spam. We've grown a lot over the past couple years and everything we do re: email and SMS has to consider bad actors and/or users that have good intentions but get carried away. It doesn't take much to hurt sending reputations and we hard to maintain ours. We've got some ideas for how to do this for both email and SMS, just need space on the roadmap to do so.

Tribesman R
May 9, 2023 10:28 AM
Joined Dec, 2022 3 posts

Any updates on this?  We have a couple different Resorts where this could be useful, and also several condos in the same complex.  Pool closure, announcements about activities, icy conditions, thunderstorm or tornado warnings, etc.

Kelly T
Jul 30, 2023 11:59 AM
Joined Jan, 2023 1 post

Any updates on this enhancement?  I don't see an issue if they have opted in to receive our email communications when they book.

Ken T
Aug 2, 2023 8:57 PM
OR Team Member Joined Aug, 2019 1472 posts

It's not a legal issue - this would clearly be legal.  The concern is the effect on overall spam scores.

Anyway, since there are a number of workarounds, this is not a high priority item.  The simplest is - go to the main Bookings screen, use the Filters to set the parameters of the bookings you want, then Export that list to Excel.  Even though the guest email addresses are not displayed on the screen, they are included in the Excel export, so, you can easily grab them all, drop them into a BCC field in your email client, and then send a single email to everyone.