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How does your vacation rental reservation service work?
We are a reservation service that assists in generating additional reservations for vacation rentals and small hotels. Through our online calendar vacation rental owners and managers mark which dates they need help booking their units. Once this information is in our system, their properties appear to potential guests using our numerous websites or making travel arrangements with our telephone reservation agents.
Can I use your vacation rental reservation service and still make my own reservations?
YES! Our service is totally NON EXCLUSIVE, meaning you are free to utilize our reservation service and continue to market and book your property in any manner or place you want.
Do you work with vacation rental property managers or just individual vacation rental owners?
We work with individual vacation rental owners, vacation rental property managers and even small hotels/inns. Our clients have anywhere from a single, small studio vacation rental units to 80 room boutique hotels to multiple vacation rental units.
I don’t need your help during the busy high season times, just the slower times of the year, can I still use your service?
Yes! As an owner or property manager you control what dates you would like us to reserve your unit. So if you only need help with the slow times, then you would simply make your unit available in our easy to use online database for those dates. For any dates that you don’t want our help with, you would simply not “open” those dates in our online database.
If you are trying to reserve my unit for a certain date and I am also attempting reserve my unit for the same date, how do we avoid double booking?
Double booking is very easily avoided with our system. You are totally in control of the dates that are available for potential reservations. For example, let’s say you reserved your unit for July 1-July 4. After reserving the unit, you would immediately go to our easy to use online database and change your property from “available” to “unavailable” for the July 1-July 4 dates. (This process takes aprox. 30 seconds – 1 minute). Once you’ve removed your July 1-July 4 dates from our system, your property would no longer appear anytime a potential guest or our telephone reservation agents searched our system for available properties. So as long as you keep your property up to date in our system, you will never double book your property with us.
How long after you make a reservation am I notified?
Once a reservation is made through our website or telephone reservation agent you are notified instantaneously. We use a real time system, meaning all of our information is maintained electronically and is transmitted without delay when something is changed.
How am I notified of a new reservation you’ve made?
Once a reservation is made through one of our websites or telephone reservation agents, you will receive an automatic email notification. This email, which is sent the moment your property is reserved, includes the guest name, guest contact information, arrival date and departure dates.
What do I do when I am notified of a new reservation?
It is your responsibility to contact the guest via email within 24 hours to communicate your check in procedure, check out procedure and any special instructions. We have very good templates you can use, if you don’t currently send something to incoming guests. Immediately contacting the guest instills confidence in your property and lets them know you are a responsible vacation rental owner or manager.
What about security deposits?
Anyone using our service is absolutely encouraged and in no way prohibited from collecting security deposits as you normally would with reservations you make on your own. However, the collection of security deposits are up to the property owner or manager, since you ultimately are the one who will be inspecting the property.
I don’t have my own credit card machine, how do most individual owners deal with security deposits?
If owners plan to collect a security deposit, they must let us know, so we can disclose this to prospective guests before they book a unit. Individual owners can easily collect a security deposit from their guests. When contacting a guest after a reservation has been made, nicely remind them your unit requires a security deposit to be paid before checking in. Owners can collect this security deposit by accepting a credit card via PayPal or by collecting check/money order via the mail. When the guest checks out, the check/money order can be mailed back or the credit card credited via PayPal. If there is damage owners would make the appropriate deductions from the deposit paid.
Who sets my property’s nightly rate, security deposit or cleaning fee prices?
You do! You are in 100% control of the prices set for your unit. If you like, we can offer suggestions on the market rates based on our experience and comparable properties in the area. However, you have the final say and can set the prices wherever you like. The only thing we require is that the prices set in our system are not set higher then what you are advertising your unit in other places. We don’t want the guest to book one place and feel like they were “gouged” by seeing the same unit for less in another place.
I would like to do special rates for stays of a week, month or certain check in/check out days (such as midweek stays), can you set up fancy pricing specials in your system?
Yes, we work with specials and price reductions for longer stays all the time.
Who sets the pet policy, smoking policy, cancelation and other renter policies?
You do. Whatever policies you have set up we can and will relay to potential guests.
How much does your service cost?
It costs the property owner or property manager nothing to list a property with us. We have no set up fees, ongoing monthly fees, service charges or anything else that isn’t performance driven. We only get paid if we make a reservation for you. If your vacation rental property is reserved through one of our websites or telephone reservation operators then we would be entitled to a small percentage of the reservation amount.
Do you charge commission on the tax, cleaning fee or security deposit?
Absolutely not. We only take a commission on the room rate itself.
Can you also manage my property?
No, we are strictly a marketing and reservation company. However, we work closely with property managers in many of the markets we serve and would be happy to refer you to a local property manager.
How is the process for handling the guest’s payment?
We collect 50% of the rental cost directly from the guest at the time of reservation. 30 days prior to check in we collect the remaining balance. For reservation within 30 days we collect the entire amount at the time of reservation. We accept checks, money orders, Visa, Mastercard and American Express. We pay owners the tax, cleaning fee and rental amount (minus our commission) within the first two weeks of the month following the guest’s check out. For example, if a guest checks out of your property on June 25, then we would send you a check for that reservation and any other June check outs within the first two weeks of July.
If I have a reservation with you and I get a better offer, can I cancel the reservation made through you?
Absolutely not! Guests that have reserved your unit, through whatever source are relying on you the owner or property manager to provide the lodging they purchased. Guests make flight arrangements, car rental reservations, business meetings and vacation plans based on having the accommodations you’ve advertised. Any attempt to cancel a reservation and leave a guest without a place to stay will not be tolerated.
How do I know you are any good at what you do?
We are very good at what we do. We primarily market through the internet and our websites appear on the first page of most major search engines for each of the markets we serve. That means more people visiting our websites and more potential guests looking at your property. You found us and so will your target guests. Something to remember is, we don’t charge any type of fee to list your property(s), so you have nothing to lose anyway. If we generate reservations, then great! If not, it cost you nothing to try our service.
What about my building’s Home Owner Association rules?
As a vacation rental property owner, you are solely responsible for knowing and abiding by your home owner association’s rules. If you are unsure of your HOA’s policy towards short term, vacation type rentals, then you are responsible for finding out. We market properties in multiple countries and markets and simply cannot keep track of every property’s HOA rules or regulations.
My property is subject to HOA rules that prohibit short term stays. Can I just have guests say they are my friends to anyone that asks?
NO, NO, NO. You cannot ask guests to lie, sneak around or do anything not considered customary with a vacation rental just to avoid your HOA. If you are worried about your HOA finding out that you are using your property as a vacation rental, then you should reconsider using the unit as such. We will not tolerate any guests being asked to do something subversive or being inconvenienced in anyway as a result of an owner trying to avoid dealing with their HOA.
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