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HomeAway – general information

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  1. Connecting to HomeAway
  2. Additional information

When the synchronization between your BeeRent account and the HomeAway portal is successfully complete, keep in mind that your accommodation units will automatically be displayed on these HomeAway sub-portals:

Connecting to HomeAway

If you wish to synchronize your BeeRent account to the HomeAway portal, first, on the BeeRent platform go to the Channels page and find the HomeAway window. Click on the ‘’Connect’’ button under the HomeAway logo, and accept the BeeRent and HomeAway terms of use.

Note: We advise you to click the ”Connect” button only once, otherwise, by clicking it more times you will cancel the already started connection process.

By doing this you have opened the HomeAway price-list on the Prices page of the BeeRent platform. Please, enter the prices and set the HomeAway price-list to the Connected status.

Further instructions on how to connect to the HomeAway sales channel depend on whether you are an agency with or without an existing HomeAway account or whether you are a private owner.

General content information for optimizing your listings on HomeAway

Data: BeeRent is the platform on which you should enter all your rate plans, prices, calendars, listing content and photos you wish to be sent to HomeAway. All changes to your listings should be made only through BeeRent, the system will automatically copy all changes to the sales channel. Changes made through the HomeAway extranet will not show.

Property Placement/Maps: The address entered in BeeRent is used to place your property in a region on HomeAway. If the address is incomplete, the placement will likely be incorrect. The placement service relies on Google to help map a property. If Google’s coverage of an area is not good, the placement could be incorrect. All integrated listings are mapped at a zoom level of the street. In order to update property location in BeeRent, go to the General section of a property page.

Language Information and Translations: The information in BeeRent should be in the same language as the HomeAway site with which you want to connect – for example, English for HomeAway.co.uk or HomeAway.com, Spanish for HomeAway.es, etc. The following fields of your listing are automatically translated to the Partner Sites by Google Translate: Headline, Summary, Description, Local information, Bedroom and Bathroom notes, Facility notes, Unit description, and Rates notes. If you edit your listing text, the changes will be automatically translated within 48 hours.

Advertiser ID: To get your AdvertiserAssignedID from BeeRent, please contact our kind support team on customerservice@beerent.com and request the AAID.

Photos: Only the first 50 photos will feed to HomeAway. The recommended resolution is 1920×1080 pixels and the maximum photo size is 20 MB.

Check In/Check Out Time: You can update this by going to Properties>Select a property>Details.

House Rules: You can specify a property’s house rules in the Rental Details section under Descriptions.

Property Occupancy: You can specify the minimum and maximum occupancy number of people for an accommodation unit by going to the Details tab.

Suitability for Children: This can be specified in the Amenities section or in the Rental Details section.

Suitability for Events: This can be specified in the Amenities section or in the Rental Details section.

Suitability for Smoking: This can be specified in the Amenities section or in the Rental Details section.

Suitability for Pets: This can be specified in the Amenities section or in the Rental Details section.

Minimal Requirements

To ensure that all listings will be able to connect to HomeAway, please make sure they all meet these basic requirements:

  • Headlines must have at least 20 characters (max of 100)
  • Descriptions must have at least 400 characters (max of 10,000)
  • Each listing must have at least 6 photos
  • Bedroom and bathroom count should be included for each listing as well as a bed count for each room that contains beds
  • An accurate address and latitude/longitude is required for each property
  • Updated calendar and rates information
  • Registration number (in areas where required)

Note: In order for your accommodation to be able to become active on HomeAway, you must have prices created and the calendar open for at least 30 days in advance in BeeRent.
In case you open or close the calendar for more than three years in advance, your listing will be blocked.

Setting up online booking

Payments: You can use BeeRent Pay to have the opportunity to charge your guests credit cards; HomeAway does not send credit card information to BeeRent.

Rental Agreement: BeeRent will request your rental agreement at some point of your connection process along with your Terms & Conditions.

Cancellation Policy: The default policy for all BeeRent users is the FIRM cancellation policy. In case you wish to change this policy contact BeeRent at customerservice@beerent.com. 
You are required to inform us about your new policy as well as include it in your Terms & Conditions.

Instant Booking Confirmation: For property managers who wish to attract more travelers and increase bookings, instant booking confirmation on HomeAway is a feature that automatically confirms bookings and doesn’t require you to manually accept or decline every reservation request.

Data fields on listing

Below is an example of a listing as shown on the HomeAway portal. The names of various HomeAway listing components are shown with their corresponding names in BeeRent.

Amenities in BeeRent

Note: For an amenity to be included in the price while booking accommodation, you need to choose the ‘’Pay at booking’’ and ‘’Mandatory’’ options. However, there is a difference depending on the synchronization option you chose while connecting your object to the HomeAway portal:

  1. If you connected only the calendar and the price list from your object to HomeAway, and you choose the ‘’Pay at booking’’ and ‘’Mandatory’’ options, the system will calculate the additional charge to the price of your accommodation, which means it will not be visible separately as an additional charge. For example, the price of the accommodation is 100€ and the deposit is 100€, the total amount will be 200€ – this is the amount the guest pays when confirming the reservation.
  2. If your object is on a Content link (you have synchronized the entire contents of the object connected to HomeAway) in the total amount of the reservation the additional charge will be visible. For example, the guest will see that the total amount of the reservation is 200€, but will be able to see that the accommodation is 100€ and the additional price for the deposit is 100€.

The table below lists HomeAway amenity names with their corresponding BeeRent amenity names.

Beerent Amenity NameHomeAway UK Amenity NameHomeAway DE Amenity NameHomeAway IT Amenity NameHomeAway NL Amenity Name
Cinemas/movie theatersCinemasKinoCinemaBioscopen
MuseumsMuseumsMuseenMuseiMusea
RestaurantsRestaurantsRestaurantsRistorantiRestaurants
Zoo/wildlife parkZooZooZooDierentuin
Holiday houseHouseFerienhausCasaHuis
VillaVillaVillaVillaVilla
HighchairChild’s HighchairKinderhochstuhlSeggiolone per bambiniKinderstoel
DVD playerDVD PlayerDVD-PlayerLettore DVDdvd
FoosballTable FootballTischfußball CalcioTafelvoetbal
Music libraryMusic LibraryMusikbibliothekMusica bibliotecaMuziekbibliotheek
Ping pong tablePing Pong TableTischtennisTavolo da ping-pongTafeltennistafel
Pool tablePool TableBillardtischTavolo da biliardoPooltafel
Video game consoleVideo GamesVideospieleVideogiochiVideogames
TVTelevisionFernseherTVTV
Cable/Satellite TVSatellite / CableSatelliten-/Kabel-TVVia satellite o cavoSatelliet of kabel
StereoStereoStereoanlageImpianto stereoStereosysteem
High-speed InternetInternetInternet-AnschlussAccesso a InternetInternetverbinding

Rates information

Correctly managing your rates in BeeRent will help ensure that the amount travelers are shown on the listing for a stay are accurate.

Daily and Weekly Rates: You can enter your nightly or weekly rates in BeeRent by going to the Prices tab of your accommodation unit and editing the HomeAway price-list. Learn how to edit prices here.

Season Optimization: BeeRent supports creating multiple seasons for your accommodation. By doing this, different prices can be set for different seasons.

Payment Schedule: Your payment schedule is tied to the cancellation policy you have chosen. You are required to send the cancellation policy to BeeRent in your Terms & Conditions on customerservice@beerent.com.

Extra Fees: You can enter additional fees for your listing in BeeRent by going to the Amenities and extra fees tab. More about amenities and extra fees here.

Discounts and Opportunities: You can create different discounts and opportunities for your guests in the Discounts and Opportunities tab on the BeeRent platform. More about how to create discounts and use opportunities here.

Managing Reservations from an Online Booking

Your reservations can be found in the Reservations tab on the BeeRent platform. Bookings that are are made on HomeAway are automatically sent to BeeRent and shown on your calendar. Read more about the calendar here.

Clients can manually input all reservations coming from HomeAway that have been created before using BeeRent and then map them (with the help of HomeAway’s customer service) so that all possible changes, such as reservation cancellation, also be recorded in BeeRent.

For more information on how to manage reservations in BeeRent read here.

Managing Reservations from an Inquiry or Off-Platform Booking

You may receive a booking through an inquiry or phone call from a traveler who found the listing on HomeAway. Properly attributing these off-platform bookings to HomeAway factors into your listing’s overall performance on the HomeAway platform. You should manually input this booking into your BeeRent calendar and attribute it to HomeAway. How to manually create a new booking in BeeRent read here.

Managing Cancellations

Correctly canceling – and not deleting – bookings in your software will ensure that HomeAway is capturing the booking’s status, which is especially important regarding billing issues (commission fees, service fee refunds, etc.)

You can cancel a booking in BeeRent by going to Reservations> Select a booking> Tools> Cancel.

Cancellation Policies:

Firm

  • Bookings cancelled at least 60 days prior to guest arrival will receive a 100% refund
  • Bookings cancelled at least 30 days prior to guest arrival will receive a 50% refund

Moderate

  • Bookings cancelled at least 30 days prior to guest arrival will receive a 100% refund
  • Bookings cancelled at least 14 days prior to guest arrival will receive a 50% refund

No Refund

  • No Refund

Relaxed

  • Bookings cancelled at least 14 days prior to guest arrival will receive a 100% refund
  • Bookings cancelled at least 7 days prior to guest arrival will receive a 50% refund

Strict

  • Bookings cancelled at least 60 days prior to guest arrival will receive a 100% refund

Predefined payment schedules

This is our list of predefined payment schedules, based on the cancellation policy the Property Manager has chosen.

Firm:

50% of the booking amount is due 30 days before check-in. The Remaining 50% of the booking amount is due at check-in.

Moderate:

50% of the booking amount is due 14 days before check-in. The Remaining 50% of the booking amount is due at check-in.

No Refund:

30% of the booking amount is due at booking (or at most within 24h after). Remaining 70% of the booking amount is due 30 days before check-in.

Relaxed:

50% of the booking amount is due 7 days before check-in. The Remaining 50% of the booking amount is due at check-in.

Strict:

100% of the booking amount is due 60 days before check-in.

Default cancellation policy and payment schedule is set to FIRM and remains so unless the Property Manager requests a change of this upon receiving the BeeRent – HA connectivity email from our end.

Additional information

The objects on our platform have a unique name you entered when creating your accommodation unit. However, the HomeAway sales channel users can enter the name of the accommodation unit in multiple languages in the ‘’Alternative Property Name’’ field, located in the ‘’Details’’ section inside your object. For example, if you enter the name of the unit in the German language in this field, this alternative name will be displayed on all HomeAway sub-portals that support the German language. It is necessary to enter a minimum of 20 characters for the name to be visible. Read more about the accommodation units details here.

Note: Because of different systems and discounts calculation processes, there is a possibility that there will be a difference in the final price between BeeRent and HomeAway. In some rare instances, the final price can vary from -5% to 5% in difference from the expected price.