Hostaway updates hostaway.com

We have been busy bees this week! Check out below all the new improvements we have just rolled out.

• Auto-charges now have tooltips that explain how they work with different channels Since each channel has different limitations regarding when to charge guests, we added tooltips that explain how these work. A tooltip for Expedia is coming soon.

• In the WP plugin, when the refundable damage deposit is excluded from the total price, it shows as such If clients choose to exclude the damage deposit from the total price, it now shows separately in the WP plugin the same it does in the booking engine.

• Clients now have access to reviews, user permissions and invoices, and charges via the public API These permissions are read-only, meaning that no changes can be made via the API.

• Communication channel used in the new inbox will now be preselected based on last channel used

• There are not that many, but you can see now readable errors for SMS or Whatsapp communication when something goes wrong.

• You can now add your logo to the Owner Statement PDF! and switch from reservation details to listing details in the owner statement.

Many of you have told us that you need to create separate websites for market-specific property portfolios or locations. You can do this now from our Public API and WP plugin. Please contact us at support@hostaway.com to learn more about this feature.

We continue adding more improvements to save you time setting up important parts of the application and now you can copy existing AutoTasks and their settings to create new ones. Just click on the "copy" icon next to the AutoTask.

Following your feedback, we have expanded our Coupons feature to the Hostaway Wordpress plugin. Just as you do today you can create coupons for a flat or % discount that can be applied during the reservation check out on your Wordpress site.

Our Coupon system is super flexible, and a great way to motivate people to reserve your listings through your personal vacation rental website. Coupons can be created to be used on specific check-in or reservation creation timeframes, for a specific number of nights, for a given number of users, or a combination of all these settings.

From now on, whenever there has been a modification to a reservation, whether it is a change of dates or an update to your payout, you will see the changes highlighted on the email notification message:

New

We have added 26 new amenities that will help your properties' performance in Vrbo. You can find them under Listings > Amenities. Check the list below with the new additions:

• Desk
• Fenced pool
• Fenced yard
• Cabinet locks
• Dishes & utensils for kids
• Books for kids
• Meal delivery
• Childcare
• Wifi
• Free wifi
• Paid wifi
• Wifi speed (25+ Mbps)
• Wifi speed (50+ Mbps)
• Wifi speed (100+ Mbps)
• Wifi speed (250+ Mbps)
• Wifi speed (500+ Mbps)
• Smart TV
• Office
• Computer monitor
• Printer
• Desk chair
• Kitchen island
• Baby monitor
• Travel crib
• Outdoor play area
• Dining table

New

For those of you that were missing the previous Revenue Management bar graph, here is a treat. The bar graph is now in Financial Reporting and comes with more functionality. You can select whether you want to use the line or bar graphs for all your formulas. You can also see data by channel or all channels combined. Enjoy!

PS. If you don't have our new Financial Reporting module on your account, make sure to contact our Support team to learn more about it.

New

This feature allows adding a new condition to message automation - listing availability. Using this condition, automated messages will be sent only if the listing is available for a given number of days before/after the stay. You can choose the number of days, and whether the condition is for the exact number of days, equal or more to that number, or between a range.

For example, you can choose to send a special offer to extend your guest's stay only if the listing is available at least 2 days before/after their reserved stay. This is useful to be able to upsell and make use of unbooked days between reservations.

New

Also known as owner blocks, owner stays are booked days when the owner of a listing or someone on their behalf is staying in the property.

Owner stays are not charged, so when creating an owner stay all the fields related to money are hidden. Also, no auto-invoices, auto-messages, or auto-charges will be created. Tasks will be created for owner stays. The owner stays appear in FR as such, to allow for keeping track of the owner’s use of the property. They are also filterable in the reservations module.

To add an owner stay, select the days in the calendar, press “add” → “owner stay”. The same can be done by adding a new reservation from the reservations module and changing the status to owner stay.

New

To better track the completion of a task we now display timestamps related to the different statuses:

1. created on - the task has been created but it is still in to do
2. confirmed - the task has been accepted by a user
3. started - the task is in progress
4. completed - the task has been marked as completed

Whilst this info already exists in the Mobile App, it was missing from the Dashboard Tasks module. Now you will be able to know exactly who has taken the task and how long did it take to complete it.