BookingCenter has an Airbnb interface to manage availability to your Airbnb profile. Please review the details here: http://www.bookingcenter.com/interfaces-and-modules/airbnb-interface/ and let us know if you are ready for us to connect to your Airbnb profile. The interface is very easy to setup, and even easier to manage on a daily basis, as it's a seamless '2-way' interface that includes all your 'Listings' and all taxes, service charges, and the 'payout' amount from each booking, so that BookingCenter can track your complete Airbnb business.
In order to activate the interface, you must agree to the pricing for the interface, and then you will have to 'authenticate' that BookingCenter will be your Channel Manager and that we can connect your Airbnb 'listings' to your BookingCenter 'rooms' and rates. Once BookingCenter has confirmed the activation of the Airbnb interface, the information below will help you manage the interface.
Airbnb Interface
Once BookingCenter has confirmed activation of the Airbnb interface, make sure you:
- Understand Availability and Rates. BookingCenter will update and manage both your rates and availability to Airbnb, as it does to other OTA channels.
- Rates: Customers can decide to use BookingCenter's 'restrictions' to set 'closeouts', Minimum Length of Stay, Maximum Length of Stay, etc on their Rates for specific Airbnb listing(s). Or they can elect to use Airbnb's 'auto-rate tools' (sometimes called "Smart Pricing") to have Airbnb 's automatically adjust rates as their 'market analysis' decides.
- Booking details and all Guest Messaging can still be found in the Airbnb app or website, but all messages and updates to Guests and bookings will also automatically be entered into BookingCenter (messaging is implemented via MyGuest), as occurs via other OTA and GDS channels.
- The Airbnb 'booking ID' given to the Guest will also be your BookingCenter 'Booking ID'. Check In the booking when the Airbnb Guest arrives, as you would any booking.
- Reservation Requests inside Airbnb. We recommend turning this feature off and going with Instant Bookings for the reasons detailed here in this article.
- Payment from Airbnb (as opposed to Guest). Since payment comes from Airbnb via their 'payout' method, you can manage the complete income and expense of an AirBnB in 3 ways:
- apply the 'Payment' to the folio using either a new receipt type called 'Airbnb Payment';
- a Direct Bill payment, which can be reconciled with your 'Payout' method setup with Airbnb as an 'Accounts Receivable';
- or the actual method Airbnb pays you by, such as: PayPal, bank transfer, direct deposit, etc.
Regardless of which method you use, we recommend placing the transaction reference from Airbnb into the 'description' field when entering the payment for tracking purposes. This way, the folio is balanced and you can reference the actual AirBnB payment to the folio of the Guest.
*Note: The way a customer agrees to interface BookingCenter can be one of three ways:
- sync_undecided - we have never had a customer choose this method and do not recommend it.
- sync_rates_and_availability - this method is a standard setting and is usually chosen to make sure ARI (availability, rates, and booking inventory) is kept in sync. This is the normal setting for bc customers.
- sync_all - this is our recommended setting for customers who do not have their Units built yet in Airbnb and want BookingCenter to over-ride any Unit info they have built in Airbnb with what is stored in the BookingCenter system. We don't recommend this setting for customers who have already built and like their Airbnb profile(s).
If you need assistance with choosing an option, ask your Support rep.
Airbnb and VRBO both support an iCal sync - using a Google calendar - which can sync availability calendars between the systems, though no content, rates nor bookings will work.
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