What’s New for Evolve Owners: 2025 Summer Release

Hi, everyone. Brian here. Welcome to our Summer Release. I’m excited to give you an inside look into how we’re listening to your feedback and moving fast to turn it into solutions that improve your experience as an Evolve owner. This release includes new tools to fine-tune your booking performance, new upgrades to our Owner App, and fresh approaches to guest communications and owner support. Before we dive in, I want to take a moment to say thank you for your trust and your partnership. It’s not something we take for granted, and we know that we need to continue earning it every day. As we approach this work, our North Star remains our Owner Promise: to support your individual success, simplify your experience, and provide peace of mind. And we believe our Summer Release raises the bar on all three. Building on the momentum from our Spring Release, we’ve launched a robust set of new tools and features that allow you to manage rates and settings directly through the calendar in your Owner App. You can now set both gap minimum rates and gap minimum stays to automatically adjust your pricing and length-of-stay requirements for shorter calendar openings between reservations. We’ve also launched last-minute minimum rates, helping you attract guests who are booking closer to check-in when you might prefer to accept a lower rate than let a night go empty. If you’re looking to encourage longer stays, you can now offer weekly discounts across Airbnb, Vrbo, and evolve.com. And you can access your monthly stay discount settings right from the Rates tab in your calendar. We’ve also added support for non-refundable discounts on Airbnb. This has multiple benefits, as it increases your visibility on Airbnb and boosts your performance overall. Our testing shows that it can increase revenue by up to 16% while offering you the peace of mind that your rental income is guaranteed for these bookings. And to make it all easier to manage, we’ve brought all customizable performance tools directly into the side panel of your calendar, so you can review and adjust these settings in the same place you track your bookings and rates. And we’re not done yet. In the coming weeks, we’re adding maximum stay limits. This is one of the most requested features from owners who want to cap the length of a guest stay, whether that’s by preference or due to local regulations. We’ll also be improving the visibility of how your rate and stay rules appear across your calendar, and providing more specific settings for weekend and weekday rates so that you can fine-tune even further. These upgrades were shaped by feedback from thousands of owners, and I know that many of you are excited about them. But I also know that not all of our owners want to be as hands-on, and others may want to use some of the tools, but feel uncertain about how to go about it. So I want to emphasize that we have Help Center resources available to provide context, and our team is happy to schedule a consultation to ensure that you’re confident about how your property is set up to perform. Just submit a request in the app under “Contact us,” and a teammate will follow up. And if you want dedicated performance support, our Plus management plan provides owners with access to a regional industry expert who will work one-on-one with you on an ongoing basis. We’ve also made a number of updates to improve the way that you access and navigate your Owner App. We started with the foundational step of creating a consistent experience across mobile and desktop. This launched a few weeks ago, and going forward, it sets the stage for quicker, more intuitive app updates, no matter how you choose to access it. Earlier this month, we introduced a new login system that eliminated the need for usernames and passwords in favor of a modern, more secure way to access your account, protecting your financial information from the hackers and phishing scams that are so prevalent in today’s world. We’ve also started rolling out improvements to calendar navigation and communication settings with more to come, including support for text and call preferences, so you can control how you hear from us and your guests. I also want to acknowledge that change, even positive change, can be frustrating. We’ve appreciated your patience. In order to keep you on the leading edge of the market, we work to balance speed, quality, and ease of use. We won’t be perfect, but please know that every change we make aims to improve your experience, and we’re committed to listening closely to your feedback and iterating rapidly. We know how important guest reviews are to your success. And when a guest leaves a glowing five-star review, we want to make it easy for you to respond quickly. That’s why we’ve launched a new feature that lets you reply to five-star reviews directly from your Owner App to save time, strengthen guest relationships, and help build momentum for repeat bookings. We’ve also made strides to ensure that your questions are answered quickly, accurately, and fully as we continue to simplify your experience whenever you need support. Earlier this year, we invested in smarter tools to help our teammates respond to your requests faster and more effectively, resulting in a 50% improvement in resolving your questions on the first interaction and a 70% improvement in chat wait times. In our Spring Release, we shared that we’re building a new messaging experience, one that brings all guest communication from platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com into a single inbox in your Owner App. I’m excited to say that after launching a beta test with hundreds of owners, the early results are promising. It’s proving to be a more seamless, effective way to manage guest conversations. We’re working toward an initial release of this tool with Airbnb Messenger early next year, with support for additional platforms and enhanced functionality to follow from there. Looking ahead, we’ve got some more exciting new features in the works. We’re currently working on a way for you to offer special discounts right in the Owner App. When you want to provide custom pricing for your friends, family, or repeat guests, you can create and share a unique rate with just a few taps. And finally, one of your most requested features is on its way: calendar syncing. We’re working on functionality that will allow you to link your Evolve calendar to iCal or Google Calendar, so you can see bookings wherever it’s most convenient for you. My hope is that you see two things reflected in our progress since our Spring Release. The first is your feedback, as that has been a driving force behind the features we launch, the changes we make, and the problems we solve. So if you’ve shared thoughts in the survey, suggested an improvement, or sat down with one of our product teams, thank you. The second thing I hope you see reflected is our commitment to living up to our Owner Promise. Our team is passionate about innovating to provide you the best owner experience our industry has ever seen. That means moving fast and consistently improving your experience with every update. Thank you again for partnering with Evolve. I’ll be back with our Holiday Release towards the end of the year, and I can’t wait to share what’s next.