All Forum Posts by: Garry C.

I'm going to also say OwnerRez, it's hands down the best that I've used. I was using Pinpoint booking and had too many issues with WordPress and the plugin. I then researched a bunch of different options, and tried a few (including Lodgify), but none of them did everything that I wanted/needed.

Then I tested OwnerRez about 6 months ago and I was hooked. I immediately dumped WordPress and went with an OwnerRez hosted site. For site hosting of 5 properties, property management features, and all the other goodness built in, it costs me about $65/month. SO WORTH IT. 

Out of the box OwnerRez did everything I needed and a few things I didn't know that I needed. And the support is AMAZING. In fact, some of my feature requests have already been implemented. I'm already getting about 3 direct bookings each month outside of the OTAs.

Had this happen during the last crash 10 years ago. The bank sent out an appraiser under the guise of giving me a better deal, and then claimed that based on the new appraisal my equity would no longer support the line, and they reduced it significantly.

I believe I collected about $350 from the class action lawsuit that resulted from that one.

Don't just show up with a spiral notepad and ask people for contact information to get on your list that may never have a deal associated with it.

Do you have any deals lined up yet? If not, you might want to think about having some before attending your first meeting, if you want to be taken seriously. Find some deals, evaluate them, put them together in a packet, and show off what you've got and ask for honest feedback. 

Yet another vote for @Linda Weygant.

My current web site is hosted by OwnerRez, and I find it to be more than valuable. I've had it up since February (about 4.5 months now) and I've already had more direct bookings than I can count on one hand (I lost count, in other words). Prior to this, I had a similar shell of a WordPress site, like you talked about above, and it was next to impossible to direct book. Now, I can't live without it. It does everything I need and a bunch of things I didn't know that I needed (Property Management invoicing, easy of setting up bookings direct for friends and family, etc.).

Yes, there is a ton of noise about breaking away from OTAs. But I don't buy it. The OTAs are NOT my enemy. They provide a service that I want and need. However, I do agree they charge too much these days, want too much control, and want us to be overly dependent upon them, which is a danger for our business. So, my goal is to transition most of my bookings to my web site directly, with the help of Facebook, Google, and social media in general. Once I have the majority of my bookings coming direct, I can then ditch the subscription model and just go pay per booking with VRBO, and not be too dependent on them or AirBNB.

@Mike Neubauer, yes, I did explore a bunch of options. However, most of those were exploration in terms of research, not testing/utilization. After reading lots of reviews and feature comparisons, I had it narrowed down to 3. OwnerRez was the last of the 3 that I tried, only because it was newer than everything else so I mistakenly thought it might not be as advanced.

ResKey did not make it into my top 3, but I didn't really start taking notes until I had my search narrowed down. So I honestly can't say that I even looked at it in depth. If you've got your search narrowed down to those two at this point, I would definitely encourage you to do a side by side comparison and see what you think (and report back).

@Tim Schroeder, you should try them out again. I'm sure they will give you another 2 week trial, and I even extended mine out to about 4 weeks when I first started, just because I was traveling a bit and didn't have the time to really get into it during the first 2 weeks. Not sure when you used them, but it's been about 4 months for me and I've found that I can get very detailed with my rates. Feel free to check out my web site and see what I've done with the rates for my properties, different pricing weekdays and weekend nights, discounts for weekly stays, etc. There are some more specific settings for how pricing works around weekends, the length of the weekends, what to do around holidays, etc. But I haven't gotten to far into that yet so I'm not sure if it does exactly what you're looking for. But they have also made recent improvements with the channel management of both VRBO and AirBNB, and have added Booking.com as well. However, setting the price on VRBO is not yet available, but I know they are working on it. And I don't doubt it, as a few of the features that I've requested since Feb. have already been added (triggered emails based on rental agreement signing, etc.).

OwnerRez is hands down the best booking software available out there. I did a bunch of research and testing before figuring this out earlier this year. It will work as a plugin for your WP site, although I ditched WP altogether and went with the OwnerRez hosted solution as well. Check it out, they've got a 2 week free trial and the support is better than I've ever received from any company, IT or otherwise.

 https://www.ownerreservations.com/?referredBy=oru5b14b4547dx

Completely disagree with what @Joe Splitrock said above. I feel the need to point that out, because it's worth noting if you want to keep your property safe, and/or protect yourself when it is treated poorly by guests. The point of AirBNB is not 'to have a standard way for hosts and guests to do business', it is 'to make money for shareholders'. The lion's share of that money comes from the guests, not the hosts, so they naturally want to do what they can to protect the interest of guests, more so than owners' interests. 

A rental agreement is absolutely necessary. But don't take my word for it. You do have a lawyer on your team, right? Ask them for their opinion. Or simply ask yourself, would you rent out a traditional rental, for an annual lease term, without a written agreement?

I imagine that VRBO will eventually do away with their rental agreements too, as they attempt to become an AirBNB clone. When that happens, I will require guests there to do the same as the AirBNB guests, visit my web site and digitally sign the renter agreement before access instructions are released.

Personally, I prefer vacation rentals. I aim for $20k annual/property.
Why? It's where I started out, it's very profitable, and I live only 2 hours away from the area, which is swarmed with visitors almost all year around.
It's a little bit more hands on than my traditional LTR, but once you have the right systems in place, it literally takes just a few minutes a day to manage.