Good words are worth much, and cost little.
Herbert's quote highlights the value of using positive and meaningful language, suggesting that using words effectively can have a significant impact even while requiring minimal effort or expense, serving as a reminder of the potential influence and value that well-chosen words can bring to communication with guests.
So let's not mess around and get to the meat of this product update that outlines our June 7th release with 13 updates, but more importantly, we know that users want to read all about the new (and long-awaited) Vrbo Messaging feature! 📨
New Features
Vrbo Messaging Added to the Inbox (Public Beta)
The wait is over. Vrbo Messaging has arrived! 🥳🎉
For those accounts connected via API to Vrbo, native in-app Vrbo messaging is now available (on a go-forward basis). Corresponding with Vrbo guests directly in OwnerRez allows users to unify their guest messaging that much more. With OwnerRez's Inbox, conversation view, system alerts, and channel templates/triggers, you can save time and automate more of your messaging to be delivered via the channel (or "on the platform").
If you already use Airbnb messaging in OwnerRez, you'll be quite comfortable with the addition of Vrbo messaging.
OwnerRez has collaborated diligently with Vrbo to ensure the seamless appearance of Vrbo messages within the OwnerRez Inbox. Users can navigate to their Inbox by clicking on the CRM drop-down menu and selecting Inbox.
New Vrbo messages will be listed in the Inbox. Note that the Via column indicates where the messages are from, in this example Vrbo.
Clicking on each individual message opens the message in the Conversation View. When users open the Conversation View, they can see any comments that Vrbo guests have added allowing them to respond directly to the Vrbo guest within OwnerRez.
Please note: Vrbo Messaging history currently works on a go-forward basis starting June 7th (or the date you connect to Vrbo via API). We will look to bring in some history of previous conversations in a future release.
Learn more by reading our Vrbo Messaging support article.
Enhancements & Tweaks
Suppressed Email Address History Improvements
Ever had a guest mark your email as Spam? Or experienced a Hard Bounce even though you know you have entered the correct email address? That's frustrating because the guest will no longer receive any future emails from you, the host, about their upcoming reservation check-in process, property information, and more.
Users will always receive an OwnerRez email alert warning users that the guest has marked an email as spam or an email has bounced but attempting to reactivate the email was not as intuitive as we'd like.
While users could always reactivate any suppressed email addresses by navigating to Settings > Messaging > Suppressed Email Addresses, users can now reactivate suppressed email addresses by clicking the button in the Email History.
Reactivated email addresses are identified by the blue label.
Learn more by reading the Suppressed Email Addresses Overview support article.
Bug Fixes
Automatically Remove SMS Brands From Users Who Disable SMS or Close Their Account. If users disable their SMS premium feature or close their account, OwnerRez will automatically remove any SMS Brand applications submitted, and assigned SMS phone numbers will be released making the SMS phone numbers available to others.
Expose Property Check-in and Check-out Times on v2 Property API. Property check-in and check-out times have now been added to the OwnerRez v2 API.
Fix Airbnb Payouts if they Include Non-booking-related Funds (e.g., Referral payments). Some users had Airbnb payout transactions with no associated bookings if they included non-booking-related funds, such as referral payments, which was confusing. This bug has been fixed and any non-booking-related payouts will appear as Adjustments in the user's Deposit section.
Fix Airbnb Transaction Sync Issue That Caused Duplicate Payments on Alteration Re-syncs. This edge case occurred when an Airbnb API-connected booking changed and created a duplicate payment transaction. This bug has been fixed and all Airbnb Transaction Syncs will now de-duplicate and match Airbnb payments by amount and date.
Fix Booking Messages From Being Sent to the Wrong Message Thread in Airbnb for Some Guests. Some Airbnb API-connected users were experiencing outbound Airbnb scheduled message failures and were not successfully delivered to the correct Airbnb message thread because it was looking for the most recent communication, using the thread ID rather than the individual booking. This bug has been fixed to now send messages to the specific thread it's using on the booking channel.
Fix Channel Bookings From Showing as "manual" if the API Channel was Subsequently Disabled. When users had an active API-connected channel that received bookings and subsequently disabled the API connection of the listing channel that created the booking, the booking indicated that it was created manually rather than the API-connected listing channel that originally created the booking. It correctly displays even if the API-connected listing channel is disabled.
Fix Hosted Site Blog Posts to Not Show if They Did Not Have a Category Set. When users created Hosted Website Blog Posts but did not set a category for the blog post, the blog post did not display on the blog even though the blog was published. This has been fixed.
Fix Vrbo Channel Bridge Import to Look at "Booking Amount" Too. This was a rare edge case but the Vrbo Channel Bridge (CB) Import was sometimes incorrectly considering the "booking amount" total item as a charge. The CB logic has been corrected to no longer consider the Vrbo "booking amount" total item as a charge and will be skipped.
Fix Vrbo Listing Feed if There are No Amenities Configured for a Property. Properties that had no amenities configured would sometimes produce an error on the Vrbo listing feed. This bug has been fixed and properties that have no amenities configured yet will no longer experience Vrbo listing feed errors.
Improve Hosted Site Blog Post Performance. Some users experienced a blog sort issue due to the blog post content on their Hosted Website causing a lot of simultaneous content sorting. This bug has been fixed and blog post content sorting will occur and display correctly.
Lynnbrook Group Deposit Processing Should Look for Yesterday's Deposits to Avoid Late Day Deposit Misses. Some users noticed that Lynnbrook fees weren't displayed as expected in the Transactions tab of related bookings forcing them to manually add those fees. OwnerRez has adjusted the daily sync to pull in the previous day's settlement instead of today's to catch everything.
