RMS Partners with FlipKey

RMS announces its partnership with FlipKey, a leading vacation rental service provider. FlipKey boasts the largest collection of verified vacation rental guest reviews on the web. It is a provider of vacation rentals on TripAdvisor, the largest travel community in the world with more than 25 million unique monthly visitors. FlipKey is majority owned by TripAdvisor, LLC and exclusively powers the TripAdvisor.com vacation rental site. FlipKey was also named the “Top Vacation Rental Site” in 2008 by Travel and Leisure Magazine.

RMS FlipKey members are able to easily publish guests reviews, receive e-mail inquiries, receive phone leads and even allow online bookings through
TripAdvisor.

Vacation Managers using RMS and FlipKey can automatically e-mail guests that have departed and request a guest review. These reviews help to increase reservations by giving travelers more comfort in booking, and lead to better inquiries and ultimately more guests. Booking online through TripAdvisor is made possible as unit information and availability updates occur automatically with RMS.

Property managers using RMS are encouraged to join the program to experience the benefits of this partnership and take advantage of the increased bookings and promotion services.   Contact us for more details: 800-366-5152.

What is a Traveler Review?

A Traveler Review on the website TripAdvisor.com is a way for guests to write about and share their vacation experiences at your accommodation or resort. It may include any details of the location including restaurants or attractions they visited during their stay.

The review must follow established guidelines in order to be published such as non-family–friendly content is prohibited. All reviews must be written by a traveler, based on personal experience and not second-hand or hearsay information. Employees or management of establishments may not pose as guests and write reviews

Reviews must be fairly recent, and that means the content should cover experiences that have taken place in the last three years.

No personal insults or irrelevant comments will be posted. Questions or comments to property representatives, TripAdvisor, FlipKey or its members are not allowed.

RMS users that are FlipKey members can easily collect and manage Traveler Reviews. These reviews can be integrated onto your website seamlessly or into your RMS unit detail page for use in a variety of ways.
Contact RMS for more information!

RMS Maintenance: Work Orders

If you are involved in the maintenance of the properties you manage, RMS has two ways to assist you in documenting and billing all the work that you do!

For an “after the fact” work order use the accounting work orders. The accounting work order entry is found by going to the top tool bar and then choosing Work Order Entry from the accounting drop-down menu. A work order transaction screen opens up that allows you to create new work order transactions that appear directly on your owner statements. You can also view past work order transactions that were entered as accounting work orders from this screen by clicking the view button. These accounting work orders can create payable entries if they are tied to a vendor or they can be distributed directly to a GL account.

This type of work order is an easy way to enter a line item directly onto an owner statement after the job has been completed and is billable to the owner. If you are interested in creating work orders that start when the job is first requested you may want to use the Maintenance work orders.

The Maintenance work orders go through a series of stages from when the job is first requested or the need for repair is reported, to assigning, completing and billing the work order. Work orders created in the Maintenance system are not automatically entered on the owner statement. The “Post Work Orders to Owner Accounts” utility tells RMS that you have completed the work order, it is billable and to include it on the next available Owner Statement.

The Maintenance work orders also allow for vendor mark ups and differentiating between labor and parts costs.

RMS Hot Tip:  Season Supplements

The Season Supplement file allows you to apply restrictions to check-in or check-out days, specify the minimum number of nights permitted for a reservation or apply restrictions to reservations crossing seasons.   It works with the Seasons file. It is not required that you use the seasons supplement file.  

The Season Supplement File is located on the Files Menu. When you create a ‘New’ Season Supplement File you give it an ID and Description. You must also assign a seasons file to the supplement from the list of seasons already in the system. This tells RMS what dates to apply the restrictions entered for this supplement.

You can set the ‘Minimum nights’ and the ‘Check-in days allowed’ or you can leave one of these alone. It is not required that you set both of them. If you are using either ‘Minimum nights’ and/or the ‘Check-in days allowed’ you do not set the Departure days or Cross Seasons values.

If you have units with restrictions you assign the Supplement in the Unit File on the Rates and Charges screen. You tell RMS which Season Supplement to use for each of the three years your system is tracking.

If you want the same restrictions to apply to a unit throughout the year, use the ALL YEAR season to attach to your season supplement. The ALL Year season should already exist in your systems Seasons Files and should run from January 1 through December 31 for each year you are tracking.

If you are using restricted Departure days located at the bottom of the screen, then you do not set Minimum Nights and the Check-in days. Simply check the boxes for the days departures are allowed while the season is highlighted at the top portion of the screen. Departure days restrictions are not required.

The Cross Seasons Arrival/Departure Days is only used when Departure days restrictions apply.

Season supplements apply to all bookings made in units they are assigned to, including in office and online bookings. Some restrictions may be overridden when making in office bookings by choosing the “not verified” option on the Reservation by Unit screen.