Property Settings

The Property Settings page in Rentals United is dedicated to manage your properties from a single place. Most importantly, Property Settings can be accessed for each channel separately. Hence, you may set different property availability for each channel you are connected to as well as define custom settings for each channel. For example, you can advertise your property with a 7% mark-up in Booking.com, with an 8% mark-up in Airbnb and with no mark-up in TripAdvisor.

Property Settings allows for the following actions:

  • connect your properties to the sales channel's system,

  • map your properties to the sales channel's listings,

  • deactivate your rates,

  • verify the connection status of the property,

  • set additional settings (if available) that apply exclusively to the selected channel and overwrite the property's data set while defining the inventory, as described in All properties.

In order to access Property Settings, you need to log in to Rentals United and click the Services tab in the main menu. Make sure that you have selected the My Services list and choose the channel you would like to check the Property Settings for. After you unfold the channel section, you will see the Property Settings button.

The Property Settings page is displayed for you. Below, see what Property Settings may look like for different channels. Note that Property Settings are channel-specific and may look differently, depending on the channel and its integration with Rentals United. If you are in the middle of connecting to a channel, it is recommended to see now Channel Integrations for the channel you are connecting to.

Figure 1: Airbnb Property Settings.

Figure 2: Booking.com Property Settings.

Connecting property to the channel

Once you established connection with the channel as described in Connecting to sales channels, now it is time to start advertising your rentals on the sales channel's website. However, before it happens, you need to connect your properties from Rentals United to the sales channel.

Note: The property connection process has various forms and depends entirely on the channel you have established connection with. If you want to learn about the details of integration between Rentals United and any particular sales channel, please see Channel Integrations. If you want to learn what the property connection is about, read further.

Connecting a property to the channel can be compared to copying a property that is already available in Rentals United directly into the sales channel system. This is the first step towards managing your properties from a single place, that is Rentals United. Sometimes, properties get connected by Rentals United or sales channel and there is no need to get you involved in the process. This, however, depends on the channel. In some cases, connecting a property is enough and you only need to activate the connection in Rentals United.

Mapping a property to the channel listing

Mapping a property is a process of creating a direct link between properties in the Rentals United system and listings in the sales channel. This is specifically useful when you have already created your inventory in the sales channel's system and the only thing you need to do is to link these listings to the properties in Rentals United. Through this direct link, your listings will synchronize their calendars, availability and prices with Rentals United. Hence, Rentals United will have control over all properties in all channels, significantly reducing the time you need to spend in the sales channels' dashboards. Below, you can preview different ways of mapping properties.

Figure 3: Assigning a property in Rentals United to the Airbnb External name.

Figure 4: Assigning properties in Rentals United to the Booking.com Channel Property ID.

Activating and deactivating the connection

After mapping, remember to activate the connection by clicking the Activate button next to each rate in Property Settings or by selecting the Activate all properties option from the dropdown in the main menu of Property Settings. If you decide to deactivate the rates, you can always do this by clicking the Deactivate button next to each rate. Note, however, that depending on the status of other rates or the channel policy, deactivation's results may be different, so be careful with that. Also, deactivation does not remove the connection between Rentals United and the sales channel, so you will be able to activate the connection back anytime.

Figure 5: The Deactivate and Activate buttons visible in TUI Villas Property Settings.

Connection statuses

Rentals United supervises the activity of your rate in the sales channels and displays its status for you in the Property Settings and Services pages. If you want to read more about statuses in the Services page, please see Channel connection statuses.

Once you open Property Settings page for any of the channels you are connected to, you will be able to see the connection status for each of your properties. There are few statuses that can be displayed for you and you can always hover over them to learn about details and further actions.

  • Active - the rate is active in the channel and synchronization runs properly. You receive reservations from the sales channel.

  • Pending - this status usually indicates that there is some action to be performed on the sales channel's side or that Rentals United does not have access to the information if the listing is live in the channel. In this case, Rentals United recommends to contact the sales channel and request to verify if your listings are live with no issues.

    Tip: If the sales channel team confirms there is no issues in the connection, but you can still see this status, you can hover over the icon and provide the listing URL in the text field. The listing URL is the link to the listing of your rental in this particular sales channel. Note that pasting this URL is not mandatory, as the connection in Rentals United is live without it. If only you find the status annoying, you are welcome to paste the URL. However, if pasting the URL does not resolve the issue, you should contact the sales channel as soon as possible.
    Note: Only PULL channels indicate that the URL is missing. If the Pending status in visible for the PUSH channels and does not update after few days automatically, please contact the Rentals United Support Team.

    Figure 6: The Pending status and the URL placeholder in the sales channel of the PULL type.

  • Inactive - this status indicates that the connection has been deactivated or has never been activated before. If this status is visible, you should have the green Activate button visible next to it to activate the connection and start receiving reservations. If the Activate button is greyed out instead, this means you need to improve the property's content as described in All properties because most probably it does not meet the channel requirements. You can hover over the icon and click the Edit button in the bubble. You will be moved directly to the Property Edit page.

    Figure 7: The connection statuses in Vrbo Property Settings.

API clients

If you are an API client, your property data is sent to Rentals United via API, depending on the connection you have established. If there are any limitations of the connection, they all depend on the implementation you have built.

For more information, please see the API documentation for Rentals United.

Rentals United advises you to verify if all the fields in your connection are coming through properly. The best would be to contact your Onboarding Manager and schedule a call. If you still need help, contact the Rentals United Support Team.