VRBO (Vacation Rentals by Owner) is an online platform that allows owners of holiday properties to rent them directly to travellers. VRBO is owned by Expedia Group, which operates a number of travel booking websites including Expedia.com and Hotels.com.
Owners of holiday properties, such as houses, flats, self-catering cottages or chalets, can register with VRBO free of charge and publish advertisements for their properties. The gateway to a channel manager is also free.
Note that, at VRBO's request, you will need to be considered a tourism professional to access this synchronisation mode.
VRBO offers all these listings worldwide, for short or long stays, for holidays with the family or a group of friends.
To create a VRBO Abritel account, the owner is asked to provide an intra-community VAT number or a Siret. They are also asked to provide a credit card reference (excluding AMEX). No deductions will be made, as this information will only be used to deduct the commission due for traveller bookings.
As part of this partnership, elloha and VRBO Abritel are offering tourism service providers instant booking.
The commission per booking is between 12% and 15% and these commissions are collected by VRBO Abritel on the 7th of the month following the month in which the check-outs for the bookings concerned are recorded.
Reservations are not cashed by VRBO Abritel (idem for the tourist tax). Travellers' bank details are transferred directly to the service providers' elloha account.
IMPORTANT: VRBO does not apply a financial penalty to service providers in the event of cancellation (as may be the case with other distributors)
How do I synchronise instant bookings between elloha and VRBO Abritel?
You must have entered either your SIREN number or your intra-community VAT number in the Payment section of the Account menu. Otherwise, the sales channels in xml format cannot be opened.
If you have already activated the VRBO sales channel in iCal format, you need to make sure that you have closed it before you can activate the same sales channel in xml format.
Once these checks have been carried out, you can activate this synchronisation by following the steps below:
Click on the Sales channels menu,
Open the VRBO channel or the Abritel channel (both will open simultaneously)
You will notice that a new menu has been added to the Distribution universe in your elloha account.
Click on this menu named VRBO
Then click on the Authorise button (top right of the synchronisation page)
A new tab will open to show you the VRBO interface so that you can connect using your login details. If you do not yet have a VRBO account, please contact their sales team.
Once you have logged in, VRBO Abritel will ask you to complete certain information. You can add new properties as part of the synchronisation process. If you do not have any additional properties, leave the relevant field at 0 and click on the Continue button.
You need to enter the elloha user number.
This is displayed in the VRBO menu of your elloha interface and is located at the top right-hand corner of this page.
You will be asked for your bank card number so that VRBO Abritel can collect the commission due. As a reminder: the commission per reservation is between 12% and 15% and the collection of these commissions is made by VRBO Abritel on the 7th of the month following the month in which the check-outs of the reservations concerned are recorded.
Once the requested information has been entered, VRBO Abritel will confirm the activation of the synchronisation, knowing that an Abritel synchronisation specialist will contact you within 3 working days in order to finalise it on their side.
If you encounter any problems during this process on the VRBO Abritel side, you can contact their team directly: +33 4 13 68 02 88 / http://aide.abritel.fr/contact.
You then need to go back to your elloha account to select the hosting offers you want to synchronise between elloha and VRBO.
Start setting up your synchronisation by going to the My offers tab in order to select the accommodation to be connected with VRBO
Then Register
NB: here are the minimum VRBO Abritel requirements concerning the content of the following fields:
Ad title: must contain at least 20 characters (maximum 80),
Description: must contain at least 400 characters (maximum 10,000),
Photos: every ad must have at least 6 photos (maximum 50),
Number of Bedrooms and Bathrooms: must be included for each listing,
Property facilities (wifi, parking, swimming pool etc...).
Your synchronisation is not yet finalised at this stage because you need to synchronise your rates.
Go to the Rates tab,
Then select the rates you wish to synchronise with VRBO Abritel,
Click on Save to finalise your synchronisation.
This connection with VRBO Abritel allows you to synchronise :
- Your rates,
- Your calendars and your stocks,
- The restrictions on your offers between elloha and VRBO (min./max. stay, authorised arrival days, special rules).
- service charges if set up on elloha
The types of synchronised offers are :
- Standard prices,
- Special offers
- Promotions.
there are 2 exceptions to this rule:
- Promotions created on special offers are not synchronised,
- No synchronisation of special offers where the price is higher than the standard price of the offer concerned.
IMPORTANT: activating Abritel VRBO synchronisation will bring up an additional field called Number of rooms in the Offers menu, Product details tab, General section. By default, the number of rooms is set to 0. You must therefore enter the number of rooms for the offer in question in order to provide this information to VRBO Abritel. If you leave the field at 0, VRBO Abritel will display a default room for travellers.
In the block dedicated to the composition of the accommodation, the number of bathrooms can also be specified, allowing VRBO Abritel to inform travellers.
You will be able to display different prices on VRBO Abritel than those you offer directly via elloha. The Macron law of 2015 put an end to price parity in France.
To set up this feature, called SmarConnect, you can click here.
Vrbo Abritel applies a commission based on the total amount of the booking, excluding the tourist tax and the deposit. If the service provider changes the date of a booking, the price of the stay will be adjusted accordingly and this will be taken into account within 24 hours. Similarly, the amount of the commission will be updated by Vrbo Abritel and deducted once the booking has been finalised.
You can create a new offer from your elloha interface which will automatically be added to your VRBO Abritel account. Once this offer has been created, all you have to do is activate it from elloha (as described above for synchronising an offer).
Synchronisation takes place within 24 hours on Abritel. If adjustments need to be made to the content, please allow a further 24 hours. For a change to a calendar, simply allow an hour.
If the new ad is incomplete or contains errors in terms of content (description, photos, property title, etc.), Abritel will send you an error report indicating where these errors are and how you can resolve them.
Please note that VRBO Abritel takes into account the time delay: this sales platform uses the data provided by elloha.
Good to know:
It is currently impossible to synchronise several elloha accounts with a single VRBO Abritel account.
Bookings created on VRBO Abritel before synchronisation is implemented will not be transmitted to elloha: you should therefore remove (set to zero) the availability for the dates concerned in the schedule.
Abritel is the historic name retained for the French market. The other country that has retained its historic name is Germany with fewo direkt, which is also part of the Vrbo family. It is therefore important to connect to the following link in order to correctly set up synchronisation with elloha https://www.fewo-direkt.de/p/onboard