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.
Before you begin
- You can manage your property title and description fields directly through Guesty or the booking channel, as outlined below.
- You can choose the languages in which your title and description will be displayed on Vrbo, Airbnb, and the Booking Website. Start by selecting the languages in which your listing details will appear on booking channels. Then, update your title and description fields accordingly.
- 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.
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].
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
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.
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.
Note:
Including email addresses, website links, phone numbers, emojis, repetitive special characters, or repetitive capitalized letters in the description fields will cause sync issues with Airbnb.
- Titles won’t sync from Guesty to Booking.com.
- 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 for the guest automatically based on the language they set in their Booking.com account.
It can take up to 24 hours for updates to the title or description fields to sync between Guesty and Vrbo.
If you have a limited sync connection type, manage the title and description fields directly in Vrbo. Otherwise, manage them in Guesty.
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
If you want to add descriptions in languages besides English, follow the process outlined here to configure the property languages. Otherwise, continue to the next section.
Set up or change a property's 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 Listings.
- Select the relevant listing.
- In the left-side menu, click Marketing.
- Click Descriptions.
- To the right of "Your property descriptions", click Edit.
- On the right side, click the downward arrow to expand the description fields.
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Add a title for the listing (mandatory), and fill in the additional description fields (optional).
You can add a translation for the same fields in your selected languages, appearing to the right of the English column. If you leave a field empty under an added language, the content of the field will be displayed in English.
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Beta users: To create a separate set of title and description fields for Airbnb, Vrbo, or both:
- Click Custom descriptions to create a separate set of title and description fields.
- 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.