Recap of Escapia User Day 2023 breakout sessions

Presentation slides for reference

• The vacation rental market has performed very well for the last few years, but economic indicators are shifting. It’s time to make sure your business is ready to weather the potential storm ahead. Maintaining revenue, growth and profitability are paramount.
• Detailed revenue reports and a full picture of current profit margins are key to running a successful business. It’s important to always keep an eye on the larger picture and ensure your business is successful on paper to set yourself up for the day when you may need to exit or are ready to sell.
• Prioritize good owners (and don’t be afraid to drop bad actors). Make owner communications a regular part of your business operations, incorporating reports from Escapia’s Performance Dashboard and other sources like AirDNA. Keep in mind that your owners are typically successful businesspeople, so they often appreciate and understand complex business principles and market data.
• Stay competitive with fees. Regularly research what fees your competitors are charging in your same markets for all your channels. Keep fees to a minimum and make sure they always correspond to a business expense to help encourage bookings.
• Keep a keen eye on expenses and manage expenses as a percent of gross rental revenue. Focus on marketing ROI, and continually review vendor contracts and shop around to find the best rates for insurance, merchant processing and purchasing. A little saving here and there can add up to make a big difference to the bottom line.
• Maintain a 10-15% profit margin for a sustainable business.

Presentation slides for reference

• Trust accounting differs from operating accounting in that it focuses on the income held and later distributed to beneficiaries like owners and vendors, whereas operating accounting covers the financial aspects of running the business, like business expenses, supplies, and payroll.
• Your accounting month-end checklist should cover reconciling bank accounts, reservations, service orders and any bills, creating preliminary owner statements, paying owners, providing final owner statements, and paying open items.
• Key month-end reports from Escapia include: Business OIAP Check Distribution report, Summary Trust Reconciliation Report, and Business Summary Trial Balance report.
• Closing the accounting period is a key step to block all transactions that can impact accounting balances on prior to selected date, blocks all reservation transactions prior to that date, and blocks all service order costs prior to that date.
• Three accounts should always have a zero balance at the end of month: 1200 Accounts Receivable, 2199 Folio Transfers and Cleaning, 2450 and 2750: Payments to Owners and Guests.
• Three accounts should always have a zero balance: 2300 Business Account Payable and 3000 Unit/Owner Equity.

Presentation slides for reference

• Changing market conditions and trends have led to pricing challenges for 2023 and beyond. Many vacation rental managers were on track with pacing and average daily rates (ADR) from early reservations booked at higher rates, but many are now seeing occupancy levels drop—leading to confusion on what approach to take.
• Segment and target your ideal audiences to maximize revenue. Divide your audience into smaller groups based on characteristics and then tailor your rate approach to better target those segments.
• Consider new and niche segments like travelers that prioritize sustainability and accessibility.
• Prioritize seasonal rates and set attractive seasonal rates for your target segments. Set up seasons for your property types with limited supply that consistently command higher rates over a longer stretch of time. And create different seasons that align with other types of demand fluctuation like holidays, reoccurring local events, etc.
• Optimize rates by channel, considering where your ideal travelers typically come from and adjust based on costs for distribution and bookings.
• Prevent conversion blockers. When needed, group fees with rent, and aim for less than two fees that equal to less than 15% of the trip total. Obscure fees like admin or management fees can cause confusion and often impact conversion.
• Integrate pricing tools like Escapia’s Market Rates and consider automating with a dynamic pricing partner like Wheelhouse, Beyond, PriceLabs or Rented.com.
• Incorporate deals and incentives with couponing now available in Escapia’s new Rates Manager.
• Email csm@escapia.com to request access to Escapia’s new Rates Manager if you’re not already using it. 

Presentation slides for reference

• New features in Escapia allow you to target and engage past guests to drive repeat bookings more easily.
• Your past guest database is a gold mine because majority of your guests have had a great experience with you (with Escapia users averaging a 4.6 review rating on Vrbo*) and you have rich, historical data you can use for targeting and marketing.
• Leverage Generate Booking Correspondence in the Front Desk menu to send messages to past guests.
• Automate post-stay communications within Escapia so you don’t have to manually send emails.
• Consider marketing to current guests during their stay with automated correspondence from Escapia, including merge tags and request to post and tag you on social media for a chance to win a monthly prize or consider providing a “friends and family” promo code.
• Leverage the new couponing functionality in Escapia’s new Rates Manager to entice past guests to book again and drive direct bookings.
• Email csm@escapia.com to request access to Escapia’s new Rates Manager if you’re not already using it. 
• Additional resources:
  • Email templates and links to 'how to' articles
  • Path to Purchase research report

Presentation slides for reference

• Reports are essential to running your business, and with more than 280 reports in Escapia it’s important to know which reports to focus on for better business insights.
• You can use the global search in Escapia to find reports by name. You can also create unit groups for reporting, and export reports to incorporate into your everyday operations.
• Leverage Escapia’s Performance Dashboard to see how your key metrics are doing compared to last year and export to Excel in tablature format.
• For more targeted reporting with detailed breakdowns of reservations with custom date ranges, use the Reservation Statistics report.
• Understand which units are doing well and which are underperforming with the YOY Comparison Report by Unit Report in Escapia.
• Verify listing content for online travel agencies (OTAs) with the Listing Readiness Report.
• Ensure accounting accuracy with four key reports: Advanced Deposits Report, Unprocessed Bookings Report, Negative Folio Balance Report, and Summary Trust Reconciliation Report.

Presentation slides for reference

• Timely and professional communications are imperative for providing a positive guest experience. The majority of communications are sent before the stay with important property, access, and welcome information.
• Today, you’re using many systems to manage guest communications. Our focus is simplifying and centralizing so you can manage everything right in Escapia.
• You can now create and send rental agreements in Escapia with the new Rental Agreement Templates and Dashboard, which includes an Adobe Sign account with no extra costs! This new dashboard allows you to choose how and when rental agreements are sent to your guests, set source categories and opt-out by marketing channels, and easily create addendums for units with pets, pools, and more.
• Work smarter with Escapia’s new Template Editor, which allows you to quickly create, schedule, and preview all your templates in one place—and now includes SMS text message templates!
• The new Communications Hub centralizes multiple workstreams into one hub allowing you to send, receive and track guest communications in a unified inbox.
• And soon you’ll be able to send priority messages to guests on the go with 2-way text launching in Escapia this year. 

Presentation slides for reference

• 80% of travelers visit an online travel agency (OTA) before making any travel purchase** so even if it’s not where they end up booking, OTAs are key to success. Escapia continues to invest in distribution and expand your options with newer tools like EscapiaConnect and the Units Editor and offers numerous channel manager options to help you be more successful.
• Listing on multiple sites can be daunting because they each have different requirements, but the key to success is to keep it simple.
• If you are listing on several distribution partners, you need to be strategic about how you setup your units in Escapia and review your current unit configuration.
• Leverage the EscapiaNet Distribution Status report regularly as a tool to see if new units are properly setup and to audit current listings with an overview of property statuses, rates, pictures, contracts, and seasons.
• For new units, set the location pin before publishing and now you can manually adjust the location if need be to ensure exact placement (but this must be done before publishing).
• You should upload at least 25 high-quality images for each listing to provide a detailed look at accommodations and amenities. Photos should be uploaded into the exterior section of Escapia to distribute to your various partners and ensure they will feed in the desired order. Stick with landscape format, with 1024x683 minimum resolution, and brief captions for best viewing across multiple sites.
• Because not every bed is in a bedroom, you can create sleeping spaces and define what kind of space it is. Sleeping spaces and bathrooms currently maps to Vrbo and we’re working with other channel partners to access this information in the future.
• Prioritize standard amenities since they are common across many channels and use custom amenities in Escapia’s Unit Configuration to feed to your website. Don’t forget about bulk update for amenities in Escapia to efficiently add or remove amenities for multiple properties at once.
• Be aware of how different distribution partners display fees. The simpler your charge setups are the more likely they are to correctly map to a channel. Complex fees may not be supported on all channels and could result in reservations mismatching booking charges in Escapia.
• The Charge Template Setup report is the best resource to ensure you’re feeding supported fees to channels like Vrbo and Airbnb.
• Flexible cancelation policies are not only a traveler preference, they also help ensure your policy will be accurately reflected across multiple sites because many channels have defined their own set of policies that they support.
• Similarly, distribution channels dictate what payment schedules they support so it’s best to keep your deposit policies simple and avoid security deposits if possible.

Presentation slides for reference

• Advanced accounting practices help you understand how the business is performing, reduce audit risk and help with accounting clean up and correction.
• You can tell if there was a chargeback or external transaction if there is a balance in the 1200 account or an adjustment amount in the reconcile credit card screen. To remedy an external transaction, confirm what occurred, make any needed corrections in the folio, and reconcile the credit settlement.
• To make adjustments in the bank reconciliation, create a new JDT, enter a new adjustment, and reconcile the new adjustment.
• To make unit ownership changes, adjust the end date on the existing owner contract, and create a new owner contract with the start date one day later. There’s no need to split cross-over bookings unless you’re using the Payment processing method for the booking. You can remove or reverse processing and reprocess if necessary.
• When entering bills into the system, allocate a negative amount for the bills allowed, note the reversal date to make sure its aligned, and if it’s a tax vendor use 25xx account.
• To process long-term bookings, make sure you separate by month to get the exact rent amount each month, and create a new reservation if it’s longer than a year.
• When paying open items, always include negatives, and use last day of the previous month for accurate reports.
• For accounting clean-up make sure you check your chart of accounts for discrepancies and review key reports within Escapia: Negative Folio Balance report, Unprocessed Bookings report, Advance Deposits by Reservation report, and Unsettle CC Payments report.
• Escapia offers robust trust accounting capabilities so it’s important to know how to use the system to its fullest potential. Talk with Escapia Support or consider hiring an outside consultant to learn more about advanced accounting practices with Escapia.