Reservation processing

Instant booking process

Rentals United allows you to set the Vrbo booking policy for your listings. You can select the booking mode for each individual Vrbo Advertiser IDs and it will affect all your properties assigned to this Vrbo Advertiser ID. You can choose between Instant bookings and Quote & Hold. See here.

If you are on instant bookings, your guests will see the Book now option on the Vrbo website.

  1. A guest enters the reservation page on the Vrbo website and books a stay via the Book now option.

  2. Vrbo checks with Rentals United if the property is available for the selected dates and number of guests. No pricing information is sent to Vrbo during the booking process.

  3. Rentals United confirms if the property is available or not.

  4. If the property is available to rent, the guest completes the reservation process on the Vrbo website by providing their personal data.

  5. Vrbo inserts a booking to Rentals United.

Request-to-book

Rentals United allows you to set the booking policy for your listings. You can select the booking mode for each individual Vrbo Advertiser IDs and it will affect all your properties assigned to this Vrbo Advertiser ID. You can choose between Instant bookings and Quote & Hold. See here.

Note that it is up to Vrbo to accept your properties to be on Quote & Hold and Rentals United has no influence over it.

When the booking policy is set to Quote & Hold, no instant bookings are possible. Instead, guests can create a request to book while browsing your property on Vrbo. You have 24 hours to confirm or decline a booking request. You can use this time for the guest verification purposes, for example.

For Vrbo, requests can be differentiated from leads by the text in the comments “This is a request to book. Confirm or reject it as soon as possible”.

While booking a property, the guest will see the Request to book option in Vrbo. After they book your property via Request to book, you will receive a booking request in Rentals United (it will be marked in a blue colour). This booking will not block your calendar’s availability yet.

Booking requests can be confirmed or declined in the Rentals United platform and via API. You can see the step-by-step instructions on how to confirm and decline requests in the platform and via API here.

While confirming or rejecting a request, remember that Vrbo will receive this information upon the next synchronisation run, so the reservation status change in Vrbo may not be instant.

Confirm a request

  1. Open Guest Planner and find the request you wish to confirm. Requests have a blue label and are in the Request status.

  2. Click the Accept this request button. The status changes now to Confirmed. The availability is blocked now.

  3. The request becomes a Confirmed reservation.

Reject a request

  1. Open Guest Planner and find the request you wish to confirm. Requests have a blue label and are in the Request status.

  2. Click the Reject this request button.

  3. The request will change its status to Rejected.

Contact host

While booking a property, the guest will see the Contact host option in Vrbo. You will receive a lead in Rentals United (it is marked in a blue colour). This booking will not block your calendar’s availability, but contain less information than a booking request. For Vrbo, leads can be differentiated from requests by the text in the comments “This is a lead. You cannot accept or reject it. Please encourage the guest to book directly on Vrbo”.

Leads cannot be confirmed or declined. Their purpose is to let you know that the guest has tried to contact you. You can reach out to the guest via Guest Communication or the chat on the Vrbo website and ask them to make a booking through Vrbo.

Reservation details

When a reservation is received, Vrbo provides us with the standard guest personal data (name, surname, phone number etc.) and booking details (property name, number of guests, date, price). Some channels also include additional information. All these details can be accessed in Guest Planner > Big Card or via API methods used to retrieve reservations, for example Pull_ListReservations_RQ.

Item More info

Guest number

Pets number

Vrbo shares the information about:

  • Number of adults

  • Number of children

  • Number of pets

Rentals United adds the number of adults and children and presents the total number of guests. You will find the total number of guests in the reservation.

Number of pets is synchronised and available via Rentals United API: e.g. by using Pull_ListReservations_RQ..
Cancellation Policy

Vrbo does not provide a cancellation policy used in the reservation while inserting the reservation. However, the cancellation policy is built by Rentals United on the basis of the data in our system. Note that the <PolicyText> limit is 1000 characters and if the text exceeds this limit, it will be cut down.

Inserting reservation manually

Bookings made offline, for example through a phone call or at the reception of your property, can be created in Rentals United. Sales channels will not have access to this reservation details, however they will receive blocked availability for the days booked in the reservation.

Vrbo will not have access to this reservation details, either, unless you click the Transfer to Vrbo button. Once you click this button, the reservation will be copied to the Vrbo system. Just make sure that you are connected to Vrbo via Rentals United, otherwise there will be no such option available.

  1. Go to the Guest Planner tab in the main menu.

  2. Guest Planner opens and you can see all the bookings for all the properties.

  3. Add a new booking by clicking the plus button.

  4. Enter the guest details and click the Start guest journey button.

  5. The Booking details page for your new reservation is opened and displays a short summary. If you leave the reservation as it is now, you will find it in the Request status. You can see that in the top bar. It is also indicated by the blue frame under the booking details header.

  6. Click the Edit booking button in the top bar. You will notice that the Booking details slightly changed. You can provide additional guest details, if needed. Click the Assign first property button to select a property when your guests will stay at.

  7. The Property information section is opened. Fill in the details of the property your guest will be staying at. Select the property from the dropdown list, select the dates and provide the number of guests. The reservation price will be calculated based on the property prices introduced in Step 5: Price and availability.

  8. Go to the Payments section and provide the guest credit card details. For more information, please see Payments.

  9. Once you introduced any changes, the saving button on the top changed from greyed-out to active. Click the Save changes button.

  10. In order to confirm the reservation, select the Confirmed status from the dropdown list. Save changes.

With Rentals United, you can insert and manage reservations that have been made offline, for example through a phone call or at the reception. You do not have to manage your offline reservation in an external location, but instead you can create them in Rentals United system and have all the needed information in a single place. Read further to learn how to create such a reservation.

In most cases, sales channels will only receive blocked availability and will not have access to this reservation details. If it is possible to transfer such an offline reservation to any particular sales channel, such an option will be displayed in Rentals United. This is possible for Vrbo, for instance.

  1. Log in to Rentals United and hover over the Bookings tab. Select the New booking option from the dropdown.

  2. The New booking page opens and informs you that the current status of this reservation is a request. You can change its status already at this point, if you wish. You can proceed with the request, too, and update it in the end or come back to this place anytime later, as described in Reservation processing.

    In contrast to sales channels, the Channel name row and logo contain the data you provided, as described in Company profile. You can easily differentiate an offline reservation from booking coming from sales channels.

  3. Provide the guest personal information. Only name and surname are mandatory, the rest of information is optional. You can also fill in the Comments section, for example if guests has any special wishes or requests.

  4. If you insert the reservation offline, you need to charge the guest on your own. Rentals United integrated with the payment provider, Stripe. If you use Stripe, you can collect the credit card details of your guest and charge them automatically from Rentals United. For more information, please seeMy services.

    If you do not use Stripe, you can log in to any other payment gateway and charge your guest's credit card. Also, you can charge your guest upon arrival, if you only wish to.

  5. Click the Add property button and provide the stay details and select the property your guests will be staying at. First, provide the time range of the stay and, additionally, the check-in and check-out hours. Click the Property dropdown list and start typing the property name. The list filters out the matching properties. Finally, provide the number of guests in the reservation. Upon this selection, Rentals United will use the pricing data available in the Step 5: Price and availability of the property you selected and calculate the exact reservation price.

    If you find that some of the pricing should be adjusted or the guest has any extra-charged special wishes, you can change the Guest price and Price to you and update the Comments section. Also, remember to update the Already paid field in case your guest paid only part of the reservation price or did not pay at all. You can get back to this anytime and update, as described in Reservation processing. Also, if you need more details of what the two above types of prices are, please see Price components.

  6. If you have not done it earlier, change the status of this reservation from Request to Confirmed, as described in this Step. If you are still waiting for any confirmation, you can always come back to this later.

  7. Click the Save button.

  1. To copy this reservation to Vrbo system, click the Transfer toVrbo button.

Modifying a reservation

Reservation modifications refer to changes that can be made to the booked stay, for example its length, number of people included and so on. In Vrbo, guests are not allowed to make modifications themselves through the Vrbo channel. Instead, you are responsible for changing reservations in Rentals United or your PMS. Then, in order to maintain synchronization, Vrbo retrieves all reservations from Rentals United into their system once a day to check for any updates.

Hence, whenever there is a need to modify a reservation, the guest should request it directly from you.

Note: If you start modifying the reservation in Rentals United, our system will automatically recalculate the new stay prices for you. If you proceed with the suggested price, Vrbo will receive information about additional costs included in this price (fees and taxes). However, if you provide a different price than our system suggested, Vrbo will receive only the total price without fees and taxes amounts and, therefore, apply mark-up in a different way, causing slight price discrepancy.

  1. Go to the Guest Planner tab in the main menu.

  2. Guest Planner opens and you can see all the reservations for all the properties.

  3. Search for the reservation or booking request to be edited or filter it out. Click the reservation. The Booking details page opens. You can see in the top bar that this is now a Request. It is also indicated by the blue frame under the booking details header. Click the Edit booking button.

  4. Update the guest details or the property information. You can also change the status of the reservation to Confirmed or Cancelled.

  5. Click the Save changes button.

  1. Go to the Bookings tab in the main menu and select Search bookings.

  2. A list of reservations is displayed. Click the one to be edited.

  3. Update the reservation details.

  4. Click the Save button.

Note: If a reservation is modified in Rentals United, the price is recalculated in case of changes to the following data:

  • the number of people in the reservation

  • length of stay

  • property

Other updates should not trigger price recalculation.

Cancelling a reservation

Reservations can be also cancelled. Similarly to reservation modifications, in Vrbo, guests are not allowed to cancel reservations themselves through the Vrbo channel. Instead, it is the you who cancels reservations in Rentals United or your PMS. Then, in order to maintain synchronization, Vrbo pulls reservations from Rentals United into their system once a day to check for any changes.

Hence, whenever there is a need to cancel a reservation, the guest should request it directly from you.

Please, note that cancellations are part of the data tracked by the Best Match algorithm. You are allowed to cancel 10 % of the bookings. It means that in order to cancel 1 booking, first 10 bookings need to be accepted. If more than 10 % is canceled, you will be penalized and all the properties at your account will drop in ranking.

  1. Go to the Guest Planner tab in the main menu.

  2. The Guest Planner dashboard opens and you can see all the reservations for all the properties.

  3. Search for the reservation or filter it out. Once you find the correct card, click on it. The Booking details page opens. You can see in the top bar that this is now Confirmed.Unfold the dropdown with the property statuses and select the Cancelled status.

  4. Click Save changes.

  1. Go to the Bookings tab in the main menu and select Search bookings.

  2. A list of reservations is displayed. Click the one to be cancelled.

  3. From the dropdown list, select the Cancelled status. Click the Save button on the bottom.

  4. Go back to the Bookings tab in the main menu and select Search bookings.

  5. A list of reservations is updated.