Creating a detailed and accurate property description can help prepare and set expectations before your guest’s stay, and get them excited about your property.
You can manage your listing's title and description fields in Guesty or on the booking channel. First, select the languages for your title and description on Vrbo, Airbnb, and the Guesty Booking Engine. Then, update your fields.
Beta users: You can set one title and description for your Airbnb integration, another for your Vrbo integration, and a separate "default" version for other booking channels with custom descriptions. Each version can include translations in multiple languages.
Read our best practices for listing descriptions, and check content limitations below.
Limitations
Avoid using the following types of content in the title or description fields, as it may cause an error in Guesty or prevent you from publishing the property to the channel.
- 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].
If you're not sure what is causing the error, try to add one sentence at a time and check for instructions appearing below the field.
Channel-specific information
Airbnb
Importing listings:
When importing a listing from Airbnb, the title and description sync to Guesty. Descriptions in different languages are also imported, provided that the language is supported in Guesty. The title and description are used as the "default" set for all your channels.
Publishing properties:
- If you set a full sync setting, the Airbnb set you configured in Guesty, in all languages, is synced to Airbnb and overrides your existing descriptions in the same languages. Descriptions in languages that aren't supported in Guesty aren't overridden.
- If the listing has a limited sync setting, manage your description fields in Airbnb. These won't sync to Guesty. You can change the listing's sync settings from Full sync to Limited sync and manage all content attributes, including the title and description fields, in Airbnb.
- Changing a 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 is managed in Airbnb and “locked” from being changed from Guesty.
Content limitations:
In addition to the written content limitations listed above, Airbnb requires the following:
- All content must adhere to Airbnb's content policy.
- Title limitations:
- Exclude symbols or emojis.
- Exclude information irrelevant to the property type, style, or experience.
- Don't exceed 50 characters.
- 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 listing title must be between 3 and 255 characters long.
- For listings with a full sync connection type, you can set the listing title in Guesty before publishing the listing, but only if the listing's status in the Extranet is "XML: Being Built". Changes to the listing title after the initial publish won't sync to Booking.com and should be made directly in Booking.com. The updates in Booking.com won’t sync back to Guesty.
- Titles won’t sync for listings with rates & availability connection type.
- Description fields aren't synced between the two platforms and should be managed in Booking.com.
- We recommend using Booking.com's "auto-generate" feature. The feature creates a listing description based on other details you provide (facilities, location details, etc.).
- We also recommend using the “auto-translate” feature for additional languages. It translates the listing description to all of Booking.com's supported languages. The description is translated for the guest automatically based on the language they set in their Booking.com account.
Guesty Booking Engine
Manage your titles and descriptions in Guesty.
When creating a Booking Engine, we recommend you first add the listing 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 listing description and in the Booking Engine setup. If the languages don’t match, the listing description is 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.
Manage your titles and descriptions in Guesty.
When connecting your Guesty account and properties to Vrbo, select a Vrbo brand to connect with. Before publishing the properties, add the brand's language to the description of all the relevant listings. Make sure the listing 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 title is under Vrbo's minimum 20-character requirement, Guesty automatically adds part of the description to the title. Also, different parts of the word "Summary" may be added at the end of the title.
Descriptions
Descriptions must be 400 to 10,000 characters long. When Guesty sends the description to Vrbo, it combines all of the 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
If you want to add descriptions in languages besides English, follow the process outlined here to configure the listing languages. Otherwise, continue to the next section.
Set up or change a property's description fields
Follow the instructions to set your property'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.
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Select the relevant property.
For multi-units, click the main unit. Settings apply to the main unit and sub-units, or you can configure specific sub-units.
- In the left-side menu, click Marketing.
- Click Descriptions.
- To the right of "Your property descriptions", click Edit.
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On the right side, click the downward arrow to expand the description fields.
Airbnb: When you update certain attributes on Airbnb instead of in Guesty, those attributes become locked. If needed, you can unlock them.
- Add a title for the property (mandatory), and fill in the additional description fields (optional).
- Add a translation for the fields in your selected languages:
- In the top-right corner, click AI and language settings.
- Under "Languages", check the box for the relevant languages. Empty fields display in English.
- At the bottom-right corner, click Update.
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Beta users: To create a separate set of title and description fields for Airbnb, Vrbo, or both:
- Click Custom descriptions.
- 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.
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Click Done.
To create an additional set, repeat the steps. If you delete the Airbnb or Vrbo set, the default set will be used for these channels.
- At the top-right corner, click Save.
Implement AI descriptions
You can create or adjust your description fields' text using AI.