Staysavr - App for direct Guest Contact

[Ben McNevis]

Here's an explanation about repercussions which is taken from the 3rd in the series of welcome email messages from Staysavr:

How HomeAway will react to StaySavr is yet to be seen. Certainly, they will try to stop it from working by making changes to their web pages. This is anticipated and planned for. There may be a game of cat-and-mouse for months to come. But what if they find out which owners are members and then either put their properties at the end of the results order, or even worse: make them disappear altogether?

The practical difficulties in identifying owners who are StaySavr members are enormous. Even members of StaySavr can't see other members. It's designed that way for maximum security. There is only one person who has the "keys" to the StaySavr database. That is the ultimate in security because it is usually "human" flaws which lead to escape of data from commercial databases. If HomeAway were to employ 20 people full-time to look at their properties online with the StaySavr app loaded (and that's the only way to see the effects of membership on a property), it would take them 100 days to complete the survey. But, even then, they would find incorrect data because our systems are designed to identify any methodical crawl and, without alerting the user, simply provide junk data. Thus, we believe that your membership of StaySavr is pretty safe.

If you decide (and it is your decision and your responsibility) that you are no longer safe as a StaySavr member, all you need to do is to go into StaySavr.com/members and switch your property visibility to "Invisible".

[KathyG]

This thread's gone very quiet!

A recent email from Staysavr informing everyone that they can now enable Live Chat not only on their own website but on HA etc too! I've enabled it for my site but it's not showing on HA yet, but does appear to work. And it's all free.

[Anne Wills]

Nothing posted for sometime, anyone come up with more info on this app. Is it safe to use?

[Hells Bells]

Perfectly safe, it is just an app, nothing suspicious about it at all. Have a look at it, give it a go, and you can always turn it off if you don't like what you see. I haven't seen any increased enquiries from HA as a result though.
I've set up the free online chat too, and it is interesting as it gives you a nudge when someone is browsing your website and tells you where they are looking and for how long they are online. I have used it as an experiment this week to see where my enquirers are coming from and for when it is best to boost my Facebook group posts. I know Google Analytics has a live option too, but this alerts you to anyone on your website, so you don't have to keep it open all the time.

[COYS]

Just bumping this because I'm in a quandary.
Why?
OD subs expiring this week & a couple of months or even weeks ago I wouldn't have even contemplated renewal. Now I'm not certain & in some small part, this is to support the time, effort & cost that must have gone into things like Staysavr, by fellow owners.
To be clear, I point blank refuse to succumb to OTA pressure tactics. I have & continue to be very vocal about my disdain for their control driven business plan.
However, I've been asking myself whether I ditch them with glee after 13 years or so or do I continue to 'play the game' as I have done with some success for the past couple of turbulent seasons, now fully armed with this app among other things.
Bump over. Quandary still pending.

[Igor]

Coys, why not switch to commission basis, increase your prices on HA to cover the little bit extra that is the true commission and then work hard at educating the enquirers to get a better deal by going direct. Some won't take the bait so you should get some bookings through HA to keep them happy with you.

StaySavr is growing from a standing start 3 months ago and the growth rate at present is slow. It will take many months before significant numbers of guests are using it. However, there are signs that the growth rate is proportional to the number of members, so gradually, that growth rate will increase.

Also the StaySavr website has comprehensive reassurances and persuasive arguments that augment your call to guests to book direct - and that is helping owner-members right now.

[Igor]

also, an update on the latest features in StaySavr:

• It can now modify a HomeAway search to home in on just the area that the guest has asked for. Instead of getting 300+ results, the user now sees typically 50 or fewer (you see: Igor learn English pretty good).
  It can reverse the default order: showing the properties least profitable for HA first.
  It can open a new tabs to repeat the search on appropriate "goodguy" listing sites (currently, only HomeEscape.com but some others will follow). A further planned development along these lines is an option to include the results from the "goodguy" listing sites within a box at the top of the HA results page.

These are all things designed to make it more appealing for guests to use: enhancing the HomeAway search to show more targetted and more relevant results.

There's an additional thing which has been an experimental feature from just after the launch: showing hotel phone number and website link on searches using booking.com, hotels.com, expedia.com, priceline.com and others. This is getting used quite heavily, so we can conclude that it is popular with users.

All the latest features are in the Chrome version. Other browsers will catch up eventually!

[AndrewH]

However, I've been asking myself whether I ditch them with glee after 13 years or so or do I continue to 'play the game' as I have done with some success for the past couple of turbulent seasons, now fully armed with this app among other things.
Bump over. Quandary still pending.

When my HA/OD etc. subscription comes up for renewal, I think I will renew if it is not prohibitively expensive. I could go for Igor's suggestion of a pay per booking listing as an alternative. My current OD listing has its uses, but not in ways that OD would like, I suspect.

[AndrewH]

...It can reverse the default order: showing the properties least profitable for HA first...

Love it!

[COYS]

...It can reverse the default order: showing the properties least profitable for HA first...

Love it!

+1
I'm leaning towards staying in the game short term - a shock to me! And not something I would have even considered were it not for the pro-activity of those with relevant skills. Good work.

[newtimber]

I tried it and didn't like it at all.
For most of the browsers, the extension is not on an approved list and most people will be put off by warnings about installing risky extensions.
I tried it on Chrome which was the approved one; but it warned me that it could change my data - which then got me concerned about the security of this app. And after installing it, it made absolutely no difference on HA but on OD, the page kept constantly reloading.

The security implications of using this extension are worrying. After gaining people's trust, in say 6 months time, the developer (or a hacker who got access to the developers data) could then put up scammer's phone numbers etc instead of the owners. Is it only going to alter what I see on HA etc or will it alter my bank webpages too?

I've no idea what this extension does; but changing the data one sees on a secure website, doesn't seem wise.

[AndrewH]

The security implications of using this extension are worrying. After gaining people's trust, in say 6 months time, the developer (or a hacker who got access to the developers data) could then put up scammer's phone numbers etc instead of the owners. Is it only going to alter what I see on HA etc or will it alter my bank webpages too?

I can't speak for Chrome, but it works for me without a hitch on Firefox. The only possibilities for fraud that I can see is that either the developer (Igor - an LMH member) has criminal intent, or the actual original listing on HA is a fake.

I think ones bank web pages are secure, unless the bank fails to keep its data safe from 'prying eyes', which apparently HA failed to do, allowing the Staysavr app. to make use of it.

[Igor]

Newtimber's comments are interesting. On dreaming up and launching StaySavr, the major obstacle that I was aware of is trust - or lack of it. It's a very difficult thing to overcome, particularly as the authors of StaySavr need to remain anonymous.

This is why I have made efforts to get reviews on Trustpilot and the StaySavr landing page makes a little noise about that.

Getting into the official browser distribution channels is a tricky one. Chrome is the only one which allows any idiot to upload an extension to the Chrome store with no questions asked. The others all have a testing/vetting procedure. This, of course makes it harder, but the thing that makes it really hard is that the javascript code inside StaySavr is obfuscated to make reverse-engineering it more difficult and they don't allow obfuscated code. If Homeaway was able to see exactly what it does, they could start designing ways to thwart it. Even worse, they could start to send innocent-looking updates to our server to fill our database with junk.

So, to get into the Firefox and Apple trusted distribution channels, I would need to make it transparent, and therefore more vulnerable. It's a tough call.

On the wider point of what mischief browser extensions could do: there is a set of permissions which have to be declared (just like with an app on your phone) and the extension can't do anything outside of those permissions, so when you install, you see the declared permissions and then either OK or Cancel. However, that permissions dialog doesn't show you which websites the extension is restricted to. Some legitimately work on all sites (e.g. a mouseover translator or adblocker) and some are restricted (just to save on memory and page loading time). So, there would be nothing to stop StaySavr or any other browser extension from seeing your bank statement on the screen and multiplying all the numbers by 10 (or 10,000 ). It just wouldn't be in the interest of any author to interfere where the user doesn't intend it as the extension would then get a bad reputation. It is a bit of a concern that it's possible though.

If StaySavr/Chrome is continuously re-loading a page, then something is wrong. I would be grateful for instructions on how to repeat that.