New Owner & Guest conversations proposal by HomeAway

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From HomeAway a few days ago…

You might have heard, a big change is in the works. We are in the process of developing a more secure form of communications where both owners and travelers can be confident they are talking to each other.

We have been listening to feedback and want to hear more from you.

Our goal is to fight phishing by designing a great solution for improved communications while minimizing the impact of the changes. Phishing is serious threat to the internet and vacation rentals are a high ticket item attractive to thieves. It’s hard to understand real impact. Until your email account has been phished, and travelers have been defrauded using your email account, phishing can seem like “someone else’s problem.”

While the purpose of these changes is to bring you improved security, you will benefit from:
Time Savings
Improved on-the-go access to inquiries and reservation tools
Easier access to conversation histories with guests
Guest profiles to help you vet guests up front

Click on the link below to walk through some of the screens are working on – by no means are these screens final and your input will help us improve them. We’d like to hear what you think so let us know what doesn’t make sense or what you would like to see done differently.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HASC2012

 

Summary…

The email address will now be from inquiry-notice@homeaway.com instead of your guest (you will not see your guest’s email address).

Owners must login to reply.

When logged in to the HomeAway conversation module owners will see the following features:

Email inbox – Manage your inquiries with the ability to reply, mark as read, add attachments and archive messages.
Templates
Reservation management – e.g. calendar.

Once you send a reply, a traveler will get your response in his/her e-mail inbox. In order to reply back to you, or to accept your quote, the traveler needs to create an account with HomeAway or sign in through Facebook.

The Owner Dashboard and Conversation System will work in your mobile browser/screen.

Another feature being added to the Conversation System is easy access to profiles. Both Inquiries and the Conversation pages will now incorporate links to traveler profiles to help you screen travelers. The profile will include a photo and information about the traveler.

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