Recent updates up to Friday 25th October 2024

Shared by Alan • October 25, 2024

Huge feature releases this week for Direct, Owner Statements, Booking.com, and more!

Direct

We've revamped the booking flow by enabling Apple Pay for Direct Premium users 🫰

We've implemented a solution that will make it easier for us to add more payment methods to the checkout flow
To use Apple Pay, guests must be using a supported browser (Safari on iOS or MacOS)
We are working on adding Google Pay as a payment method option as well, but need to finish testing

Direct Premium guest verification now happens in the guest portal, using our guest verification screens ✅

We recently released Ad-Hoc Guest Verification that's powered by Authohost and allows guests to complete the verification in a guest portal
Direct Premium reservations used a different method, which redirected guests to an Autohost-owned flow
We've merged these experiences so that Direct Premium reservations will now complete their verification in the new Hospitable hosted guest portal
These updates will make it easier for our team to quickly improve the guest verification process based on hosts' feedback

Abandoned booking reminders 💸

We want to help hosts convert more Direct visitors to completed bookings
There is an opportunity to do so with visitors to Direct sites abandon their booking, meaning they never finish making the reservation
Now we'll send emails to guests who have abandoned their Direct booking, to help reclaim a percentage of those bookings that would otherwise have been lost

A new and improved version of Owner Statements has landed 📈

We now have full control and ownership of statements, which means we can move faster and easily make improvements
Commissions and fee ownerships are now fully customizable, allowing property managers to set up any kind of agreement they have with their owners
The statement template has been overhauled, making it easier to cross-check payout calculations
You can now apply an Agreement (commissions plus earnings from fees) to a future date, helping property managers who are renewing and updating agreements in the future

Delete commission period 🗓️

We can now delete individual reservation agreements per property
It needs to be a period without a predefined end date (so the last one that was added)
It cannot overlap with a statement that is already published
If there is a previously active agreement, that end date will be unset and will apply indefinitely.

Secondary users: fixed primary host switching from the Metrics navigation bar 📊

Introducing Booking.com's "Request to Book" support 📘

Hospitable will fetch and display Request to Book in the app, which will be practically identical to Airbnb's inquiries
The only major difference is hosts are not yet allowed to send replies to inquiries, but this has been added to the roadmap

Display expected payout for inquiries in one of the sidebars 💰

We are now displaying the expected payout for inquiries on the left-hand sidebar before they get accepted

Suggest with AI now uses the host's preferred name 🤖

If the host's preferred name is set on Airbnb, that name will be given as the host's name to the Suggest with AI prompt

V2 webhooks for hosts as a private pilot ✋

Since the launch of the V2 API, we've had many requests to make the new webhook formats available for both hosts and vendors
This has now been launched to all hosts who requested in Featurebase for a short pilot, with the aim of a full release next week
This is the final release for us to set a date for the deprecation of our V1 API

API source for calendar data 📅

We now show which vendor is the source for calendar updates (rather than just API)
This is another win now PriceLabs has migrated to the V2 API
These are not back-dated but should start populating when vendors sync calendar data again

Calendar restriction on the API 🔒

If an Airbnb channel is considered calendar-restricted because of its scopes, we now return an error when someone tries to update that property's calendar via the API

Format guests' telephone numbers 📞

We'll try to convert the number to the international format with a + and the country code based on the guest's country and given phone number
This will make clicking them easier to take action

The time picker now rolls over in 12 hour-mode 🕰️

For people who have 12-hour mode enabled and trying to use the time picker, the rollover from AM to PM was unclear and now it's easier to use