Your Monthly Product Roundup [September 2021]

Summer already seems like a distant memory. Tourist hot spots are less busy and nightly rates and airfares are starting to drop. This sounds like bad news for hosts, but don’t be discouraged just yet. 

Autumn is on the way and it’s a great time to plan a vacation. There are plenty of guests browsing for the perfect place to stay right at this moment. While you’re waiting for them to book, why not take a minute to check out our September product updates?

Haven’t tried out iGMS automation for your short-term rental business yet? It’s high time you unlocked our 14-day free trial and checked out the features for yourself.

Let’s see what our developers and technical support teams have been up to during September.

🚀Top-quality improvements:

• You will be glad to know that as an official Airbnb partner (also preferred software partner), we have now added a few new fields under the Airbnb Listing Editor:
  
  
  • Basic minimum days notice
  • Basic seasonal minimum nights
  • Request to book for more nights than shown in the “Maximum Stay” field
  • Expectations field
  • Pass-through occupancy taxes

• As a further improvement, we have also added the check-in instructions field under the Airbnb Listing Editor. Now you can quickly and easily let your guests know how to access your rental. 

• Check out our freshly redesigned itinerary information ready for print! All essential information is presented and organized for your convenience.

📌 Our technical support team has some things to share, too! Here’s what they’ve fixed and refined during September:

• We noticed, on rare occasions, reservation requests received from Airbnb were leading to an additional empty message in an Inbox thread. We’ve now fixed this.
• A pesky but rare bug resulting in automated messages not being sent for inquiries from Airbnb guests has now been resolved. Rest assured, your current and potential guests will get all the information they need.
• Occasionally Special Offers sent to guests via the Inbox were showing as accepted (even though that was not the case). We have now set this right.
• We resolved an issue relating to email notifications not being sent to property owners when a reservation arrived for all Airbnb listings. Property owners can now stay on top of bookings easily. 
• We spotted an issue whereby canceled Vrbo and Booking.com reservation payouts appeared in the reports. This problem has now been resolved, and the correct data can be found in our reports. 
• We caught and squashed a very rare bug that made the iCal calendar for tasks disappear in the Property Editor. 

• It came to light, once or twice, that the text for automated messages was sent without attached images. We have now fixed this issue and all automated messages will be sent with the correct attachments. 
• There was an issue whereby prices changed via external pricing management tools integrated with iGMS such as DPGO, PriceLabs and Wheelhouse did not take effect on the Booking.com property calendar. We have now put this right.
• We fixed a very rare bug in the Inbox – we noticed messages sent by the host/ co-host were occasionally mistaken for guest messages. We have made sure this will never happen again! 
• We spotted that even though some auto reviews had been disabled for a specific property, the reviews might still have been sent to guests. This was linked to a problem with the settings in the profile, and the issue has since been rectified. 

• In rare instances, Booking.com properties allowed bookings to occur even though a reservation was already in place. We have improved the application stability to mitigate the risk of double bookings moving forward.
• We resolved a problem relating to copying reservation information via the iGMS mobile app. On occasion, reservation data was not being copied to the clipboard, this will no longer happen. 
• We located and removed a rare visual glitch whereby Booking.com reservations were not visible on the property calendars.
• We spotted that whilst creating or altering a manual reservation the information field, if updated, would not save the new data. We have now set this right.
• It was brought to our attention that message threads containing a reservation request or an instant booking were appearing as read in the Inbox. We have now fixed this, so no conversations will be lost! 

• We found a very rare bug relating to manually syncing iCals. When attempting to sync the iCal the sync would fail. Now everything is working as expected.

• We spotted and resolved a visual glitch relating to inquiry messages displaying incorrect check-in and checkout dates. 
• We noticed that some updates in the Airbnb Listing Editor might fail for a short period of time. Thankfully, that issue was quickly resolved and there are no more problems with changing the settings.

Like the updates but not an iGMS user yet? Why not join now for FREE? Take the opportunity to learn about iGMS functionality, and find out how your hosting business can benefit.

We also invite you to come and say hi in person! We host weekly product webinars two times per month. Stop by and meet our Customer Care agents, who will be more than happy to walk you through the system in real-time (and answer all your questions). 

That’s it for now, but we’ll be back with more updates in October!