Accepting Direct Payments As A Host

Accepting Direct Payments As A Host

Accepting Direct Payments As A Host

Accepting payments directly as a host has become even more important during COVID-19. If you were a host that didn’t offer refunds to guests when they couldn’t make it to your property the OTAs have penalized your listing’s rankings.

If that is you, getting guests to your property outside the OTAs is going to breathe life back into your vacation rental business.

Along with accepting direct payments, you should also look for ways to get more visibility.

One way is to setup your own website with branding for your vacation rental. That takes some money and time to establish but it’s well worth it.

Another alternative is to setup a listing on Houfy. 

How To Accept Payments Directly As A Host

There are a bunch of online payment processors you can use. The three most popular are PayPal, Stripe and Square.

We have an account with 2 of the 3, we’ve never used Square. We do have a Stripe and PayPal account. Between PayPal and Stripe – we use PayPal more often. Paypal has a really easy interface that allows you to create invoices and more importantly for us, it was easy to setup partial payments. As far as the transaction fees they charge they are about the same.

In this post we’ll go over setting up your PayPal account and creating invoices that you send to your guests for payment. Guests can pay using either their PayPal account or a credit card.

First – Creating A PayPal Account

You’ll want to create a business account. If you don’t already have a PayPal account you’ll need to create one. Click sign up on the link below

https://www.paypal.com/us/signin

If you have a personal account, you’ll need to convert the personal account to a business account. The business account allows you to send invoices.

The business account doesn’t cost anything to setup.

 

paypal click sign up button
Paypal select business account click next

Follow the Prompts

They make it really easy to setup an account, just follow the prompts and it’ll guide you through the process.

Two questions that can come up in the business account prompts.

1 – If you don’t have a legal entity setup for your property you should select Individual/Sole Proprietorship as your Business type

2 – In the Product or service keywords section use Lodging – Lodging-Hotels, Motels, Resorts, Central Reservation Services for the Describe your Business field since that seems to describe vacation rentals the closest.

Other than that the prompts are pretty self explanatory.

Once you filled out all the info, congrats! You now have a Business PayPal account!

 

Link Your Bank Account

Once you’ve linked your bank account, you’ll be able to transfer money to and from PayPal. You can also add a credit card to your PayPal account if you plan on using it to make payments out of it.

To link your bank account Select Pay & Get Paid on the Menu bar, then Select Banks & Cards

 

Click banks and cards.from the menu

It’s Time To Create An Invoice

Here come the fun part… creating invoices!!

To get to the invoices page click Pay & Get Paid on the Menu bar, then select Create & Manage Invoices

That will bring you to the Manage Invoices  screen.

Click create and manage invoices from the menu
Manage invoices screen click create invoice

On the Manage Invoices screen click the Create Invoice button on the upper right and you’re on your way to creating your first invoice.

Adding The Invoice Items

The invoice is pretty easy to fill out. And after you do it once, it’ll be even easier because PayPal will remember your previous entries.

In the Bill To field you can enter either the guest’s name or email address.

If you’re planning on sending the invoice directly from PayPal then it would make sense to enter the email address here.

The Line Items

Rental Amount

The first line item we enter is the rental amount, followed but additional charges (like the cleaning) then the security deposit.
For the item name we use something descriptive like:

February 7, 2020 – February 18, 2020 (11 Nights)

Then we add the tax. Click the Tax field and click + Add Tax

For the tax name we just name it Tax (I know, crazy! lol) then enter the tax rate and click add

Additional Charges

Any additional charges are treated the same as the rental amount.

If you have additional charges like cleaning, linens, hot tub fee, pool heat, etc, add a line item for each with the cost and select sales tax for each.

Adding The Security Deposit

We call the security deposit a Refundable Security Deposit on the invoice. 

It’s almost like the other line items, the only difference is that we don’t apply a tax to it.

That is the basics for creating an invoice. At this point you have the bare minimums for the invoice.

Message to the customer

This is a note that is toward the bottom of the invoice when the guest opens the invoice.
If you’re going to send the invoice directly from PayPal then this is where you would put in your message to them.

We don’t send the invoice directly from Paypal, more on why later…

Terms and Conditions

Click Add terms and conditions on the bottom of the invoice to communicate your cancellation terms. Basically when they get a cancellation refund, what percentage, etc…

Adding Attachments

And lastly, under More options you can add attachments (like the lease agreement).

This is also more important if you plan on sending your invoice directly from PayPal.

Allowing Multiple Payments

To accept multiple payments click the Allow partial payment check box. On PayPal’s new interface it’s in the box to the right of the invoice, the older interface has the check box toward the bottom of the invoice. Just do a search for Allow partial payment on the invoice page and you’ll find it.

There you can specify the first payment amount as the minimum payment.
For example, if we want a 25% first payment and the total invoice was $200 we would set the minimum payment to $50
That is it! You’ve created your first invoice outside of an OTA!
click the allow partial payment to break up the payment

Sending The Invoice

Now that you filled in your invoice you have a couple of ways to send the invoice to the guest.

You can either:

1 – Send it directly from PayPal by clicking the Send button on the upper right (we don’t recommend this)

2 – Or you can copy the link to the invoice and send an email with the link (recommended).

To copy the invoice link, click the arrow on the right-hand side of the Send button and you’ll see the option to Share invoice url

With the dialog that opens it’s important that you DO NOT just copy the URL.

Instead click the Copy Link button, that will copy the link and save your invoice.

If you just copy the link and click done, the invoice won’t be save. Really not good.

using the share url
Share an invoice link dialog click copy link

Why Not Send The Invoice From PayPal

(And What We Do Instead)

So why not send the invoice directly from PayPal?

I mean, you totally could.

It works essentially the same way, and the guest can pay the invoice PayPal sends them without a problem.

We decided to use the copied url option instead.

We copy the url into an email along with our message and include the rental agreement as an email attachment.

Since we use an email sequence, this isn’t going to be the only email we’re sending them, and having all our messages come from a single email address just makes sense.

Additionally, the message dialog is limited in characters. They increased the limit to 4000 characters (which is a lot!) but the dialog also doesn’t support formatting.

The message dialog looks ok when there are only a couple of sentences but once you add more text in there the invoice just looks messy.

 

Customize The Invoice Header

You can customize the top of your invoice by adding your vacation rental’s logo, website, and phone number.

If you have any of those things setup then it makes sense to add them to your invoice.

If ya don’t have any of those things setup, ya should : ) 

Send that invoice out to your potential guest first, but add a house name, logo, website and seperate phone number to your to do list! 

customize the invoice header

To customize the top of your invoice click the box on the upper right and it’ll show a dialog were you can change what it displays.

If you have a website (or a houfy link) you can also the URL here.

Mission Accomplished!

You now have your invoice! One thing to keep in mind is if you break up the payment PayPal will not remind you about the remaining balance.

We setup reminders in Outlook that trigger a couple of days before the balance is due.

 Update, we now use our own tool to remind us when these payments are due. We may be making that tool available to others very soon!

VRL A finished invoice example



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Accepting Direct Payments As A Host - Portrait

Corona – How Long Will Vacation Rentals Be Affected

Corona – How Long Will Vacation Rentals Be Affected

First, let me start by saying our hearts go out to anyone that has been affected by the coronavirus. Unfortunately, from the sounds of things, it isn’t over, and this will affect many, many more people.

What’s happening around the world right now is absolutely crazy.  I never thought that our world would be disrupted so quickly by a disease.

It’s mind-blowing.

It’s been hard to get an idea of what to expect, and how to appropriately react to everything that’s happening.

As if the actual events aren’t alarming enough, there’s also a lot of misinformation coming at us.

With so many unknowns coming at us all at once, it’s hard to know what to believe and what to do.

I’ll try not to be too alarming in my post, but I also do not want to downplay the severity of what is happening around us.

I’ll cover what we’re doing and expecting. Hopefully, this information will help you figure out what you can do to get through this rough patch.

How Bad Is Coronavirus?

I’ve heard people both inside and outside of the vacation rental industry say that this is like the flu. Some have even said it’s less dangerous than the flu or similar to a cold.

I don’t know where they are getting their information, but this is absolutely not the flu.

Think of it from a logical perspective. Right now there are 5 countries on lockdown, essentially closed for business – China, Italy, Norway, Spain, and now France.

When have you ever heard of that happening – ever – in history?

This has never happened, ever.

It can not possibly be just the flu. These countries all have a lot to lose by doing what they did and yet they still did it.

That should tell you something.

It makes me incredibly nervous knowing that some vacation rental ‘experts’ are telling their followers that this isn’t a big deal.

If you follow that advice, and they’re wrong – you will be in trouble.

However if we were to flip that around – say you think it’s a big deal and plan for it and then nothing happens – there’s no harm no foul.

Which seems smarter to you?

The way we’re looking at it, it’s best to plan for the worst-case scenario. Hopefully, the worst-case scenario doesn’t come true, but if it does we’ll be prepared for it. 

How Long Will Coronavirus Affect Your Vacation Rental

Not all vacation rentals will be affected the same. I think it’s clear that we’re all going to be affected in some way – it just won’t be the same for everyone.

We have two vacation rentals, one is in the Poconos mountains in Pennsylvania and the other is in Kissimmee, next to Disney World.

Neither one had a guest asking about the cancellation policy… until Disney World announced it was closing its doors.

With the announcement, every Disney property booking until the end of the month was asking about our cancellation policy.

So far the Poconos property hasn’t really been affected. That, of course, may change.

 If it becomes difficult or impossible for your guests’ to travel to your property then sadly, your income will dry up.  As of right now, if most of your guests fly to get to your property then it would be reasonable to expect cancellations.

If most of your guests come from an area that is now quarantined or if your property is in a quarantined area, then your out of business until things get back to normal.

Personally, we initially planned on not having bookings for a couple of months in both properties.

We increased it to three months when we realized that China still hadn’t gotten back to normal.

They imposed super strict laws on their people in an effort to slow down the spread of Corona and despite that, they’re two months into it and still haven’t recovered.

In the U.S., we haven’t (and won’t) have anything close to what China did to their people, so there’s a strong chance it’ll take longer for us to recover than China.

We updated our plan to 3 months of no bookings. Again, we hope it won’t be that bad – but if it is, we’re already expecting it.

How We’ve Prepared For Corona

We live in Florida and have gone through a couple of hurricanes. One thing we’ve learned through those experiences is how important it is to prepare. Although this isn’t a hurricane, we’re treating it like it’s hurricane Corona, the big one.

Like I said in the prior section, we planned for a couple of months worth no income.

Our vacation rentals are our main source of income, so it goes without saying that imagining not having any income for a couple of months was a very uncomfortable exercise.

Although it was uncomfortable it was absolutely necessary.

These are the things we’re doing to prepare ourselves.

Cut costs

This is both personally and in our business. Anything that isn’t absolutely necessary needs to be stopped. Save as much as possible, where ever you can.

We like to provide things like a welcome pack and all kinds of perks intended to increase the amount of 5-star review, those have all stopped.

The goal right now isn’t to get reviews, it’s to make it to the other side of this crazy storm.

Figure Out Your Nut

If your property is vacant for two or three months, what are the bare essentials you have to keep paying for? It’s what I like to call the nut.

You need to be able to cover the nut. With us, if a property is vacant for that long we can turn off the cable, stop the pool and hot tub services, turn off the pool heat, HVAC, unplug the refrigerator – reduce the costs where ever we can.

As far as we know, right now the banks will still be expecting their monthly mortgage payment. So if you have a mortgage (which we do) then you should figure out where you’ll get the funds to make the mortgage payments for the next 3 months.

Preparing Personally

We don’t know how the government is going to try and slow down the spread of Corona. What we do know is that testing was the best way to minimized exposure when it was first detected in the country, and we did a really poor job of testing.

Now the only other way to stop it from spreading is by reducing social contact.

There are many levels of reducing social contact. In the states, we’ve already reduced most of the large gatherings, which is good.

Ultimately, at one point or another, we will be required to stay at home for some amount of time. So we have food, water, medicine, and cash.

Our personal plan was similar to our business plan. We prepped with the expectation of staying home for a couple of months – and God we hope it’s not even close to that amount of time.

Be Logical And Be Safe

Those are our thoughts on what is going on with the Coronavirus and our vacation rental business.

I hope this wasn’t too alarming and has helped give you a framework of what you can expect and do to prepare for the crazy times that the Coronavirus has brought our way.

During this uncertain time, it’s important to think things through calmly and logically. We have the advantage of being able to see how things unfold in the countries that have been affected before us to gauge how things progress.

How have you prepared your vacation rental business? Let me know in the comments below.




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Coronavirus – How Long Will Vacation Rentals Be Affected

Corona & VRBO – How To Avoid Cancellations

Corona & VRBO – How To Avoid Cancellations

With the coronavirus making its impact on vacation rental businesses everywhere, it’s important to find ways to get by. None of us wants our vacation rental business being a casualty of Corona.

With no idea as to how long its affects will be felt, it makes sense to try and keep as much of your money as you can.

In times like this, cash is king.

What The OTAs Are Saying

Each OTA is handling the corona pandemic differently, but the general message is that hosts should return the full amount back to the guest. Check out the post How VRBO and Airbnb Handled Corona Cancelations to find out how the big sites dealt with corona cancellations.

If the corona cancellations you’re getting are not on Airbnb then you’re in luck. You’ll be in control of how your cancellations are handled.

How We Usually Feel About Cancellations

During normal times, we’ve always had a strict cancellation policy. but these are not normal times.

Now we’ve changed our point of view… for now.

We didn’t feel comfortable keeping our guests’ money if they are unable to fly here.

Since the changes of booking the cancelled dates was slim to none, we decided to keep a flexible cancellation policy.

Now, we understand not every host can do this but we are trying to work with our guests.

We plan on keeping our business after this pandemic and during hard times good intentions go a long way.

Keep in mind, what goes around comes around – both good things and bad. We’d much rather the good things come back around to us. 🙂

How We’re Handling VRBO Corona Cancellations

We decided to give the guest the option of rescheduling their stay using the money they have paid as a credit toward their stay or they can cancel their trip. We let them know that we’d really prefer they reschedule their stay.

So far, all the VRBO guests that asked about cancelling have decided to reschedule their stay instead.

It’s not perfect for us, because we still loose the income from the rescheduled dates. But it allows us to keep the money that they have already paid. If we were to cancel the stay, we’d have to return all the money they already paid.

In this type of scenario we want to hold on to any money we can.

Remember cash is king.

Having those payments in our pockets now is far more important to us then the payments for the later dates they reschedule their stay to.

Things To Keep In Mind When Rescheduling

Give Them A Cut Off Date

Don’t leave it open-ended. The cut off can be either when they need to decide on dates by or when they need to use the dates by.

Either, way there needs to be a cut off date.

It Should Be A Credit 

Meaning it’s not a date for date exchange. If they booked off-season dates and choose new dates that are peak season  – they’ll need to pay the difference.

We also told them that we’ll pay them the difference if the new dates are cheaper.

The Details For Moving The Dates

If The Guest Doesn’t Know The New Dates

If your guest doesn’t yet know when they’ll be moving their trip to, you can move the reservation to a date way in the future – like simetime in 2022.

Otherwise

If they already know what dates they want, you can change the reservation dates and everything will work the same as usual. If there’s a difference in pricing you can either give them a refund or send them a payment request for the difference.

I Hope That Helps

It’s not something that everyone will want to do, and it’s not our first choice. But faced with this strange set of circumstances it seemed like the best solution for them not to lose their money and for us to also hold on to existing income.

What’s your take on it? How’re you handling your VRBO Coronavirus cancelations?

Let me know in the comments below!




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Corona & VRBO – How To Avoid Cancellations

How VRBO and Airbnb Handled Corona Cancellations

How VRBO and Airbnb Handled Corona Cancellations

It only makes sense that both VRBO and Airbnb would want to protect their business during the most turbulant time our industry has ever had.

The big two OTAs (Airbnb and VRBO) handled the corona situation very differently. Both were definitely pro guest, but one was not sensitive at all to the hosts.

Unfortunately, how well your vacation rental business fairs during the Coronavirus pandemic depends a lot on the source of your bookings.

What Airbnb Did To Handle Corona

Airbnb recently gave all guests the ability to cancel their stay with a 100% refund. 

I tell ya, It’s amazing how generous Airbnb was with the vacation rental owners’ money.

I saw a few vacation rental owners that were trying to get the cancelled guests to change their dates instead of flat out cancelling – but that sounds like an uphill battle.

At this point, if the booking is on Airbnb, you’re at the mercy of the guests’ whim – and whatever new rules Airbnb comes up with… not cool at all.

By taking these drastic steps, Airbnb has shown us that the guest’s are NOT our customers, they’re Airbnb’s customers.

When you list your property on Airbnb, you loose any control you have over your business. In fact with so little control, it hardly feels like it’s your business at all.

Luckily for us, most of the bookings we have in the next couple of months are on VRBO.

How VRBO Handled Coronavirus

VRBO had the opposite approach to Coronavirus. Instead of generously returning your money to the guests, they encouraged owners to be flexible with their cancellation policies in light of COVID-19 and offer full refunds to those who wish to cancel.

VRBO also recently sent a message to all travelers letting them know that VRBO is encouraging owners to be flexible and give 100% refunds.

This was a much nicer approach.

You are the business owner, and the guests are also your customers, not just VRBO’s customers.

This gives you all the control, and some flexibility on how you mitigate your loses by preventing the cancellations and keeping some of the income.

Update: We just had a cancellation on VRBO, it looks like VRBO just updated their cancellation dialogs. It now says you can give a 100% refund and doing so won’t affect your performance standings on the VRBO platform.

How We Handled The VRBO Coronavirus Cancellations

We agreed with VRBO’s recommendation to refund our guests’ money if they really want to cancel.

Although we agree with their recommendation we offered another way for the guest to not lose their money and for us to keep the income through these rough Coronavirus waters.

 I wrote about how we handled our bookings here, Corona & VRBO – How To Avoid Cancellations

What Do You Think?

How did you feel about how Airbnb and VRBO handled the Coronavirus pandemic?

Let me know in the comments below!

 




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How To Create Your VRBO Email Templates

5 Things You Need to Know about VRBO Reviews

5 Things You Need to Know about VRBO Reviews

5 Things You Need to Know about VRBO Reviews

In many ways, reviews are the bread and butter of our business.  Travelers rely on reviews to make their final decisions.  Reviews create trust. 

The more happy reviews you have, the more competitive your vacation rental property will be. And that usually translates to more bookings and also being able to charge more per night.

So let’s dive in.  A little bit of knowledge can go a long way.

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. If you decide to purchase any of these products, we earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We recommend these products only because we have experience with them and use them for our own business. As Amazon Associates we earn from qualifying purchases.

1.  Owner & Traveler Have Up To a Year To Be Rated

If neither the Owner nor the Traveler leaves a review, they each have up to a year to rate each other.

It seems unlikely that someone will leave a review after a month, much less a year.

But for some reason, if neither the owner or the traveler leaves a review, the VRBO reviews window stays open for a year.

5 Things You Need to Know about VRBO Reviews - You Have Up To A Year To Be Rated

2.  The Review Time Timespan Can Be Shortened To 14 Days

If either the Owner rates the Traveler or the Traveler leaves a review, the other party has 2 weeks to leave a review or rate the traveler.

After the 14 days, the window will close. The other party that did not rate or leave a review will lose their opportunity.

3.  VRBO Has A Double-blind Review Period

The Owner or the Traveler cannot see each other’s reviews or ratings until they submit their own review or rating.

After 14 days, the review or rating will become public, even if the other party didn’t submit their review.

If you forgot to post your rating, after 14 days you’ll lose your opportunity.

So, if you (the owner) submits a Traveler rating, and the Traveler didn’t submit a review, your review of the Traveler will post on the their profile after 14 days, and the Traveler loses their chance to review their stay.

5 Things You Need to Know about VRBO Reviews - VRBO Has A Double-Blind Review Period

4.   There Are Instances When A Traveler Can’t Leave A Review

A traveler cannot leave a review on the VRBO if they book through Expedia.

HomeAway/VRBO said they are working on this but as of this article that is still the case.

2022 Update: Recently we had a guest that came in from Expedia and they were able to leave us a review… but we couldn’t rate them! VRBO said they’re working on expanding that, but as of right now, when it comes to Expedia bookings – only the travelers can leave a review.

Additionally the VRBO reviews are moderated. If there’s something in the review that VRBO doesn’t like then the review will not post.

5.  VRBO Has An Extortion Policy

 If a Traveler contacts you and tries to get something in exchange for a review, or worse, threatens to leave a bad review if you don’t give them something… that’s called extortion.

Having your business threatened like that feels horrible (Ask me how I know that).  but it’s reassuring to know that HomeAway/VRBO has your back.

HomeAway has an extortion policy, if you feel like that is happening to you reach out to support and let them know. They’ll remove the bad review and ban the person from the platform – Nice!

5 Things You Need to Know about VRBO Reviews - VRBO Has An Extortion Policy

Tips For Increasing Your VRBO Reviews!

These are the steps we take to get more reviews:

  1. Rate your Travelers, and they will automatically receive a reminder to rate their stay
  2. If after a couple of days there’s no review, send them another review request
  3. Still no review, send them one more a few days after that

Following this process will increase your chances of receiving reviews. Make sure to make the review request personal, lively and fun – and mix it up. Each review request in the series should be different.

You should have your review request messages setup as templates, that alone will save you a ton of time. No need to re-invent the wheel every time you ask someone for a review.

Check out the article How To Create Your VRBO Email Templates and How To Create Airbnb Email Templates for details on setting up your message templates.

Tip: Don’t forget to publicly respond to the reviews you receive. This will let future guests know that you’re a communicative, involved host! And added bonus, the VRBO algorithm loves it too. 

Save Time – Create VRBO Review Request Templates

For the love of all things holy, you should really create templates!

You should have your review request messages setup as templates, that alone will save you a ton of time. No need to re-invent the wheel every time you ask someone for a review.

Check out the article How To Create Your VRBO Email Templates and How To Create Airbnb Email Templates for details on setting up your message templates.

Tip: Don’t forget to publicly respond to the reviews you receive. This will let future guests know that you’re a communicative, involved host! And added bonus, the VRBO algorithm loves it too. 




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5 Things You Need to Know about VRBO Reviews

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