Must Know before the connection with Vrbo

In this article

• General information
• Vrbo Listings Approval Content Guidelines
• SSO 

General information

During the first step to connect your BookingSync listings to Vrbo, you will need to choose your Vrbo brand. Make sure to select the correct brand and currency according to your location:

No worries if you don’t yet have an account on Vrbo, you’ll create one directly during the connection.

Note that if you have listings on other sites, Vrbo might be able to migrate your listings to one of these sites, please contact your Vrbo account manager to check if it's possible.

• Note that depending on your location, the activation process takes between 1 and 4 weeks ( Vrbo delay) as soon as you sign the activation contract.
• INSTANT BOOKING is mandatory on the listings synced with Smily via API. If your listings are on "Bookable online" status or "Bookable on Request", your listings can be published on VRBO but only with invoice payment.
• Online booking is mandatory if you want your bookings to be synchronized. Offline booking is still possible but you will have to create your bookings in your BookingSync calendar manually.
• The Vrbo payment gateway cannot be used anymore when connected. You MUST define a payment gateway in BookingSync if you wish to use online bookings. Please, note that Paypal Express can NOT be used as a payment gateway for the Vrbo synchronization.
• VRBO commission can only be paid by credit card and only 1 credit card can be set up for the payment of the VRBO commission.
• The Vrbo full synchronization via the application can only be used to connect Property Manager accounts, i.e. you must have a property management company (the G card is not obligatory because use of a payment gateway); but with no property number restriction, except in APAC, where the limitation is still 5 or more properties. If you have an owner account, you can connect using iCal. See this article for more details.
• Only the first 24 pictures are synced with your Vrbo listings.
• If you want to edit or cancel your Vrbo bookings you MUST do it in BookingSync. All Vrbo bookings will be shown as locked in BookingSync BUT you will be able to cancel and edit the booking in BookingSync.

Vrbo Listings Approval Content Guidelines

To make sure your listings are approved, please follow the guidelines provided by Vrbo. If any of these requirements are not met, your listing will not appear in the Vrbo feed.

• Address has to be present: address1, city, country_code, zip in Rental > Location
• Geocode has to be present: latitude and longitude in Rentals > Location (under the map)
• The description has to be present in the master brand's locale* and must be min 400 characters long in Rental > Base
• Headline has to be present in the master brand's locale* and at least 20 characters long in Rental > Base
• Minimum 6 photos in Rental > Photos
• Minimum 1 bedroom, unless the rental type is a studio in Rental > Base
• Minimum 1 bathroom in Rental > Base
• The rental type has to be set in Rental > Base
• Rates have to be set in Rental > Rates (at least one period entered)
• Rental agreement has to be present in the master brand's locale* in Settings > Payments
• Cancellation policy has to be present in Settings > Payments
• A payment gateway must be linked to the BookingSync account in Settings > Payments and assigned to each property in Rental > Private.
• Maximum field length restrictions: Description: 10000, Summary: 80, Photo description: 400

SSO (Self Service Onboarding)

Self Service Onboarding entry point

• All Property Managers will be able to access the SSO tool via a single link
• All eligible currencies and brands will be managed through a single URL
• The SSO link can be prefilled with the advertiser ID for each user which will ensure a smooth experience for our clients

When users click on the SSO tool, the first step to do is to select the language in the following drop-down menu to have their integration done on the correct brand. Not selecting their adapted language will not redirect them to the correct brand and will end up in a mismatch of content/currency between Vrbo and their software XMLs.

Ineligible PMs - blockers in SSO

This type of issue can occur from time to time when completing the following steps on SSO:

•  VAT / Tax ID number
• Software information
• Credit card

Usually, these time-out errors can be resolved with the following actions:

• The Self-Service Onboarding tool will flag a partner as Ineligible if the partner does not meet our requirements for onboarding. The tool will not allow the partner to continue and will display a message with the ineligibility reasons + how to contact Vrbo.
• When this scenario applies, please let the PM know that they have to contact IPM support to request their integration

• IPM support phone numbers by Market:
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  UK: +44 800 032 5708 DE: +49 69 3807 89474 FR: +33 413 681 044 ES: +34 911 238 313 IT: +39 06 80 33 52 00 PT: +351 213 665 077