Register and list your property

The first thing we need to do is click on ‘Provider Setup’ to start the registration process.

Enter your preferred username, email address and password. It is important that you enter a valid email address.

Select the subdomain that you want to use. The subdomain will be used to give you a personalised view of the vakobi portal that you can link to from your own website.

Enter your business or trading name, if it’s different from your personal name.

Carefully read the terms and conditions, and check the box when you have done so.

Click ‘Let’s get started’ when you have provided all the information.

Vakobi will send you a confirmation email within the next few minutes confirming your registration.

If you don’t receive the mail within a few minutes, click on the ‘Resend activation mail’ to ask vakobi to resend it.

You can now log into your account for the first time.

Initially, you won’t have any properties set up. Start by clicking ‘Create New Property’ to set your first property up.

Let’s start by entering your Property Name, its type (villa, apartment, cottage, etc.) and its floor space (in square meters or square feet).

Choose the default currency for payment, and your preferred change-over day.

Next, enter a text description of your property.

Next, select all of the facilities that apply to your property.

If there are some facilities that are not listed here, you can enter the details one of the boxes provided, and click ‘Add’.

Don’t worry if you don’t capture everything here on the first go – you can always change and edit your selections later.

When you’re happy with the property details that you’ve selected, click ‘Save & Next’ to move on to the next screen.

Next, create as many bedrooms as you need. For each room, you can provide information about the room.

Now, start adding photos about your property. For each photo, you can add a brief description, or caption, to the photo. Try to make this as descriptive as possible,

You can choose which photo is the default one – this is the photo that will be shown in all search results. Ideally, it should be an attractive, external view, and should show off any particularly strong features of the property, such as the swimming pool.

You can add and delete as many photos as you think is appropriate. You should aim to have at least one photo for every major room in the property, and a few photos of the exterior also.

Vakobi does not have an extra charges for photos.

Clicking on any of the photos will allow you to see it in full size, just as the holiday maker browsing your property will see it.

Add the location and address details for the property. The location you specify here will be used in the search criteria, so be sure to set it appropriately.

Next, let’s set up the rates for the property. This process is somewhat involved, so we’ll take it in stages.

Start by selecting the season you want to provide a rate for (low/medium/high), the start and end dates of that season, and the weekly rate that you want to apply. Because we set our changeover day to be Saturday, the ‘From’ date must be a Saturday, and the ‘To’ date must be a Friday.

When you’ve done that, click Update Seasons.

As you can see, the system now indicates that a rate has been set up by colour coding the relevant date range (3 January – 27 March) in green (the colour code for low season).

You’ll also notice that the season has been added into the Low Season box with the price we set up – ¤350/week.

Let’s go ahead and add a few more rates.

Here we’ve added a mid season rate of ¤500/week, and a high season rate of ¤650/week.

After we’ve added those rates, you can see the rate calendar starts to fill up with colour coded boxes. The yellow boxes represent mid season, the orange high season, and the grey unallocated dates.

It’s worth pointing out that the ’seasons’ themselves are only there to help to colour code the dates to make it easier for you and the holiday maker to quickly scan the calendar. There are no rules to say that mid season must follow low season, or that prices in high season must necessarily be higher than mid season (although you probably want them to be).

It’s always possible to change the rate that you want to charge for any given week range. In the example above, we decided to make the 2 weeks starting 8 August an extra high price (¤750/week).

As you can see, the system has split the high season into three different periods, with three different weekly prices.

This gives you complete control and flexibility over the pricing of your weeks, on an on-going basis, to allow you to charge a higher rate at peak times, and a lower rate at quieter times.

You can add as many rates as far into the future as you wish, and we would encourage you to keep at least 12 months of forward rates on the system.

When you’ve set up your rates, next we move on to managing the availability of the property.

At first glance, this page looks very similar to the rates page, and indeed, initially it is, showing the same calendar setup. This page, however, has quite a different purpose.

Whereas the rates page allows you to determine what rate a given week may be rented for, this page allows you to determine what weeks are to be made available to rent at all. In this page, you can mark weeks as being available or unavailable for rent at any time.

Let’s say, for example, that you wanted to use a property for personal use for a particular week, you can select the relevant dates here, and mark the property as unavailable.

When you click Update Availability, that week then becomes marked as unavailable, and the system will not allow it to be booked at that time.

For larger property management companies, another reason that properties may be marked as unavailable for periods is that they may be allocated on an exclusive basis to a tour operator. In this instance, you can mark the weeks that have been allocated to th operator as unavailable, and mark them as available again if the operator releases them back.

As with all of these steps, it is possible to change these settings after the fact – you’re not stuck with them.

Next, add the contact details of the person who will be responsible for checking your guests into this property.

Provide clear instructions on how to collect the keys to the property, how to get there, and any other relevant information.

All of this information is automatically included in the confirmation email that the holiday maker receives once they’ve booked your property.

Next, you need to set up your accounts details. This only has to be completed the first time you create a property, and remains the same for all your properties.

Provide some details about your business, as opposed to this particular property. This is particularly useful if you have multiple properties being listed, and want to describe your agency or property managment company.

Next, enter your payment details.

You may choose to be paid by paypal, or by bank transfer (the most normal way).

In this case, carefully enter the relevant banking details. In the example shown above, we have used international bank routing codes.

If you bank in the Republic of Ireland, you may provide your Irish banking details.

Alternatively, you may use a PayPal merchant account if they wish. In this case, you should provide your merchant account email address.

Once you’re happy with all of these details, you can now list your property for advertising on vakobi.

Holiday makers can now find and book your property on vakobi!

Well done, you’re on your way!