Creating a detailed and accurate listing description can help prepare and set expectations before your guest’s stay, and get them excited about your property. Read our best practices for listing descriptions.
You can easily manage the property title and description fields via Guesty or the booking channel, as described below. Additionally, you can select the languages in which the title and description will appear in your Vrbo, Airbnb, and Guesty Booking Engine (Booking Website for Lite users) integrations. First, select the languages in which your listing description fields will appear on your booking channels. Then, set or update the content of your listing title and description fields.
Check our content limitations below.
Prerequisites and limitations
Avoid using the following types of content in the listing's title or description fields, as it may cause an error in Guesty, or prevent you from publishing the listing to the channel. If you're not sure what causes the error, try adding one sentence at a time, and check for instructions appearing below the field.
- Email addresses
- Website links
- Phone numbers
- Emojis and symbols
- Abbreviations (Mr, Ms)
- Repetitive special characters
- All-capitalized words (such as "CC").
- Two words (or more) connected with a dot will be considered a website address and will cause an error to appear. I.e., [word].[word]. To solve it, add a space after the dot: [word]. [word].
Airbnb
Importing listings:
When importing a listing from Airbnb, the listing's title and description fields will be pulled to Guesty. Descriptions in different languages will also be imported (as long as the language is supported in Guesty). The title and description fields will be used as the "default" set for all your channels.
Publishing listings:
Pilot users:
You can set one set of title and description fields for your Airbnb integration in Guesty, and another “default” set for your other booking channels. Each set can include translations in multiple languages.
All users:
- If you set a Full sync setting for your listing, the Airbnb set you configured in Guesty, in all languages, will be pushed to Airbnb, and override your existing descriptions in the same languages (descriptions in languages not supported in Guesty will not be overridden). If the listing has a Limited sync setting, manage your descriptions fields in Airbnb, and they won't be synced to Guesty. Pro users can change the listing's sync settings from Full sync to Limited sync, and manage all content attributes, including the listing title and description fields, in Airbnb.
- Changing a listing title or any description field in Airbnb disables your ability to update this field in Guesty, regardless of the sync setting. In this case, the description field will be managed in Airbnb and “locked” from being changed from Guesty.
Additional content limitations:
- Ensure the listing's written content adheres to these limitations.
- All content should also follow Airbnb's content policy.
- Titles must be 1-50 characters long. Exceeding the maximum number of characters can cause the syncing to fail.
- The summary field must be no longer than 500 characters. Exceeding the maximum number of characters can cause the syncing to fail.
Booking.com
- The property title must be between 3 to 255 characters long.
- For listings with a full sync connection type: you can set the property title in Guesty before publishing the listing, but only if the listing's status in the Extranet is "XML: Being Built". Changes to the property title after the initial publish won't be synced to Booking.com, and should be made directly in Booking.com. The updates in Booking.com won’t be synced back to Guesty.
- Titles won’t sync for listings with rates & availability connection type.
- Description fields are not synced between the two platforms and should be managed in Booking.com. We recommend using Booking.com's "auto-generate" feature. The feature will create a property description based on other details you provide (facilities, location details, etc.). Also, we recommend using the “auto-translate” feature for additional languages. It will translate the property description to all of Booking.com's supported languages. The description will be translated to the guest automatically based on the language they set in their Booking.com account.
Guesty Booking Engine (Pro users)
Manage your listing titles and descriptions in Guesty.
When creating a Booking Engine, we recommend you first add the property description in all relevant languages, using the instructions below, and only then proceed to create the engine. Ensure you select the same languages in the property description and in the Booking Engine setup. If the languages don’t match, the property description will be shown in the Engine in the default language, English. Learn more about adding languages to the Booking Engine.
Vrbo
It can take up to 24 hours for updates to the title or description fields to sync between Guesty and Vrbo.
Pro users: Manage your listing titles and descriptions in Guesty.
Lite users: If you have a limited sync connection type, manage the title and description fields directly in Vrbo. Otherwise, manage them in Guesty.
Beta users: When connecting your Guesty account and listings to Vrbo, select a Vrbo brand to connect with. Before publishing the listings, add the brand's language to the description of all the relevant properties. Make sure the property description language in Guesty matches the brand’s language. For example, if your chosen brand is Abritel, all property content must be written in French. Otherwise, you won’t be able to publish them, and you’ll receive the following error: "The listing should include content in the following Vrbo brand language".
Titles
Titles must be 20 to 80 characters long. For listings on Vrbo Japan, at least 10 characters must be specified. A maximum of 80 characters is allowed.
If the listing's title is under Vrbo's minimum 20-character requirement, Guesty will automatically add part of the listing's description to the title. Also, different parts of the word "Summary" may be added to the title at the end.
Descriptions
Descriptions must be 400 to 10,000 characters long. When Guesty sends the description to Vrbo, it combines all of the listing's description fields and sends them as a single description. Ensure the total number of characters (for all fields) does not exceed 10,000.
Add languages to your listing
Guesty supports the following languages:
- English
- French
- Indonesian
- Korean
- Romanian
- Chinese
- German
- Italian
- Polish
- Spanish
- Dutch
- Greek
- Japanese
- Portuguese
The title and description fields of your listing will appear in your booking channels in English if you don’t select additional languages.
Follow the instructions below to add additional languages to your listing.
Step by step
- Sign in to your Guesty account.
- In the top navigation bar, click the mode selector and select Operations mode.
- Click Properties.
- Click the relevant listing.
If the listing is a multi-unit, you can manage this feature via the multi-unit's main unit, and choose whether to apply the settings to the main unit only, or to the main unit and all sub-units. Alternatively, you can configure the settings for a specific sub-unit. Click the main unit or a specific sub-unit.
- In the menu to the left, click Marketing.
- Select List on channels.
- Click Edit next to “Languages”.
- Click the checkbox of any language you want the description fields to appear in.
Step by step:
- Sign in to your Guesty account.
- In the top navigation bar, click Listings.
- Click the relevant listing.
- In the left-side menu, click Marketing.
- Select List on channels.
- Click Edit next to “Languages”.
- Click the checkbox of any language you want the description fields to appear in.
Setting up or changing a property description fields
Follow the instructions to set your listing's title and description fields' content, and add their translations to the additional languages you've added.
Step by step:
- Sign in to your Guesty account.
- In the top navigation bar, click the mode selector and select Operations mode.
- Click Properties.
- Click the relevant listing.
If the listing is a multi-unit, you can manage this feature via the multi-unit's main unit, and choose whether to apply the settings to the main unit only, or to the main unit and all sub-units. Alternatively, you can configure the settings for a specific sub-unit. Click the main unit or a specific sub-unit.
- In the menu to the left, click Marketing.
- Click Descriptions.
- Click Edit next to “Description”.
- In the “default” set, add a title for the listing (mandatory), and fill in the additional description fields (optional). Then, add a translation for the same fields in your selected languages, appearing to the right of the English column. You need to add a title for each language (mandatory). If you leave a field empty under an added language, the content of the field will be displayed in English.
-
Pilot users: If you want to a separate set of title and description fields for Airbnb, Vrbo, or both, click Custom descriptions below the default set. The default set will be duplicated from the default set, and you can customize it for the additional channels.
- In the pop-up, provide a name for the new set of descriptions.
- Select the channels you want the new set to apply to: Vrbo, Airbnb, or both. Then, click Done.
- Edit the title and description fields.
- Click Save.
To create an additional set, repeat the step. If you delete the Airbnb or Vrbo set, the default set will be used for these channels.
Step by step:
- Sign in to your Guesty account.
- In the top navigation bar, click Listings.
- Click the relevant listing.
- In the left-side menu, click Marketing.
- Click Descriptions.
- Click Edit next to “Description”.
- In the “default” set, add a title for the listing (mandatory), and fill in the additional description fields (optional). Then, add a translation for the same fields in your selected languages, appearing to the right of the English column. You need to add a title for each language (mandatory). If you leave a field empty under an added language, the content of the field will be displayed in English.
-
Pilot users: If you want to a separate set of title and description fields for Airbnb, Vrbo, or both, click Custom descriptions below the default set. The default set will be duplicated from the default set, and you can customize it for the additional channels.
- In the pop-up, provide a name for the new set of descriptions.
- Select the channels you want the new set to apply to: Vrbo, Airbnb, or both. Then, click Done.
- Edit the title and description fields.
- Click Save.
To create an additional set, repeat the step. If you delete the Airbnb or Vrbo set, the default set will be used for these channels.