Heads In Beds Show - Crafting The Perfect Property Description To Maximize Your Bookings

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

In this email marketing overview episode, we dive into the basics of gathering and marketing via email for your vacation rental business. ⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellBest 2023 Super Bowl Commercials Tide CommercialGuest Hook Property DescriptionsBing ChatGPT🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagramTwitter🚀 About BuildUp BookingsBuildUp Bookings is a team of creative, problem solvers made to drive you more traffic, direct bookings and results for your accommodations brand. Reach out to us for help on search, social and email marketing for your vacation rental brand.

Welcome to the Heads and Beds show where we teach you how to get more properties, earn more revenue per property, and increase your occupancy. I'm your co-host Conrad. And I'm your co-host Paul. How are you doing today, Paul? I am doing fantastic. We're moving through the calendar year. It feels like it doesn't,

it's not possible that we're into February, middle of February, almost here. But I guess that's the time just keeps passing. We just have to catch up to it at some point. Yeah, what an interesting, I'm doing pretty good. What an interesting day today is. Yesterday was the Super Bowl.

So we record these on Mondays. People, they get released on Wednesdays. So people are like the Super Bowl, that was last week, but give us a minute to edit. Anyways, Super Bowl was yesterday, Valentine's Day tomorrow. So make sure you get something for your wife on Valentine's Day. That's important. But what was your kind of Super Bowl reaction? Just quick hit thoughts with two fans here of the NFL, but certainly our teams weren't in it. So

just watching as casual it was, I was like to put a little money online. So I definitely had a few wagers that paid off for me little and when I say little, I truly mean little wagers. It was those were bet with your heart, not with your head there. But it was, I thought it was an exciting game. A lot of action, which is what you're hoping for. I think the casual fan probably isn't looking for that seven to three or 10 to seven defensive slugfest. I think we both acknowledge there could have been a little more defense, but yeah, I overall,

I thought it was a fun game and kept me interested pretty much all the way through so that that's i hope all you can ask for in a super bowl how about you how'd you feel about the game there i thought it was actually pretty good i thought it was a good game i don't know if it was like the greatest game obviously there was some controversy at the end with regards to the refs i just think like roger goodell what a fascinating man what a lesson in if you're in charge of the organization right or hopefully you're like a figurehead in the organization and the organization is successful you can say the stupidest stuff and get away with it. It's like a broad life lesson. It doesn't necessarily apply to like,

our audience here at Vacation Rentals. I mean, it sort of does in some respect, but like, Brian Chesky is not this way. But like Brian Chesky could say dumb things, and he would just get respected because he's the CEO of Airbnb. So Roger Goodell being the, not exactly, but de facto CEO of the NFL just says dumb things about refereeing being, oh, it's great this year. And then they have, of course, an extremely controversial call to round out the Super Bowls. What are you gonna do? I thought it was a good game. Overall, I was entertained by it. I thought the sort of like a strange underdog narrative, even though the Chiefs have the best players to follow along with. So I dug it. It was

pretty good. Maybe we'll fold that then into marketing minute with respect to kind of what we saw because i think the i think the super bowl is always entertaining from a marketing and advertising perspective because of course there's this oh super bowl commercials i wasn't blown away by super bowl commercials this year i like some of the nostalgic ones i thought they were clever like alicia silverstone had a bit there there were some different clever ones where they were throwing back i see the kevin bacon evie ones all the time i think i saw one of those in the like right before the game started it's like it's targeting someone who's slightly older than you or i maybe who loves that era but i thought overall there was like some mediocre ones there were some bad ones the guy who so there's an article here we'll put a link in the show notes

a super bowl commercial was six to seven million dollars for a 30 second spot one guy had it was like the crypto casino guy or something like that there was a qr code and then it just went to his twitter profile i was like that seemed like dud and he blew 6 million on that. So that one was interesting to me. And then some humorous ones, your typical Budweiser humor and stuff like that. But I wasn't blown away. I don't know what was there a commercial that stuck out to you or one that had you thinking about it or laughing or anything like that. I did expect more QR codes to be leveraged this year just based on. But that was just a Coinbase play from last year.

Exactly. It wasn't novel this year. I've seen enough of them just on and i've cut the cord i don't have cable but i have a lot of the samsung streaming on the smart tv so some of the t some of the channels that are it's definitely i'm not getting the mainstream commercial stream by any means but i have seen more people shift and adjust to being a lot more overt with putting a QR code in or doing something like that. So I think the animal control, the TV show that I think that's the only one that actually saw that that used the QR code.

I thought that I like Joe McHale. So that was pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. I thought the most eye opening one was the Miller's Light, Coors Light. And it turned out to be a Blue Moon commercial. I don't know if they all went in for two and a half million for it, but I've never seen them like a multi-brand commercial

kind of roll out like that. So that was, I think, the most interesting one. And I guess- Proof they were in a recession. They had to take their budget and split it three ways. That's exactly. And I wonder, was it really a Blue Moon commercial? What happened there?

It was the fighting Coors Light and Miller didn't I do that a few years ago where they mimic the styles of other brands I think this is I don't have notes for this is just my memory but I think a few years ago Tide had a bit where they would mimic the front of a commercial it was well known so they did like the old spice like guy on the horse and then at the end yeah it's Tide ad we got you and they were like playing on that they did I do remember that maybe they were trying to do that and it was just confusing and like the tide but the tide wouldn't work because they did it like five times it wasn't just one it was like they kept doing it over and over again yeah yeah that's i think for the people

who who are like looking for that knock it out of the park commercial i think we've seen it is i'm sure we're gonna see something at some point, probably a chat GPT or an AI generated commercial at some point. But it is, I think we've maybe become desensitized to it so much that there's not a lot of other stuff you can throw out there that is going to be different from what we've seen. Yeah. My only other note, we can button that up and then we'll definitely get into the AI stuff because I think you have something on that's more marketing a minute related is every car manufacturer, of is now pushing the EV including Ram who was basically like we're going to do an EV truck and it's going to have like crazy distance was the gist of the commercial that I got but they were like yeah it's not going to even be ready until 2024 I'm assuming that

means you aren't going to be able to buy it until 2025 so I thought that was almost like silly like premature are you going to go want to buy a Ram gas truck today if you know that it's going to be like they're going to come out with like 800 mile or a thousand mile range truck i don't know it was like an interesting premise but a bad like timing in my opinion i think they should have bought that commercial next year but i was reading an article the other day about like the cost of new cars has gone up like 50 so like i haven't bought a car since 20 for me since 2016 so it's been a while since i bought my car it's long since paid off to and my wife's car bought in 2020 but like all these car ads and i'm thinking yeah they're spending seven million dollars to advertise these evs which okay i

understand that's like the future i'm not going to push that hard against that i will buy one at some point obviously you have no choice at some point but i was thinking the whole time i was like is that really um is it like practical to be spending all that money when the cost of a new car has gone from thirty thousand dollars to like forty eight thousand dollars and i'm just like now we're blowing thirty million dollars on Super Bowl ads. So I was just the whole thing was just interesting to me as like a consumer more so than anything. But to your point, you said a commercial is gonna be made with AI or something at some point soon. I agree with you. But what's here today with AI, you cover us up or catch us up on the big news.

This is interesting and a little bit more relevant to you. Yeah. So I mean, this I think longest time, and it still continues to be Google dominates search. I don't think there's any doubt about that. It's still the number one be all end all for search. But what we did, and what Bing announced last week was that they did see after a core update in the middle of January, the largest jump in relevance in two decades. Now, that's a big stretch of time. I think certainly that's something where I did they take share from Google? No, I can't say that for certain. But it all happened those tools that we're starting to add to Bing Search, adding to other Microsoft products. It is interesting to see. It's not just, okay, we added it and people are maybe seeing fluctuation. No, there's some pretty dramatic

increases that happened. If you go into Bing Search Console, just like you look at Google Search Console, there's a lot of shift that happened. There's a lot of volatility that happened in those rankings. So I do. I'm interested to see when you couple that with the fact that when Google, I think Google did the same thing. They released their own, they did the initial demo of BARD, their AI tool, made a little mistake and it literally cost Google $100 billion in valuation because BARD made a mistake in the demo. So I think it's a two-way street of we're seeing what ChatGPT is doing as it's being implemented into Bing.

And we also see how much of a positive factor, how much of a negative factor this can be. We're talking about some large scale changes, some large scale shifts that is going to be happening in both search engines. But as Google is now trying to catch up and is in catch up mode, it's not a good spot to be because they are.

They're going to be under the microscope at every turn. And I wouldn't say it was necessarily the right decision to release it early or just try to beat OpenAI, ChatGPT and Microsoft out there. However, now you just have to be that much more refined and make sure you're that much more in line. Because if one mistake can cost you a hundred billion in market cap, what is the next shift? What does that next shift look like? When are you going to release the next version or the next update? So it continues to be a topic of conversation. And I don't think that's going to, I think we can pretty much book in that once a month or once every couple of weeks or so,

we're going to have a conversation about ChatGPT and the next update or BARD and the next update. And we're all just living in this AI generated world now. So awesome. Are we even real? Yeah. Yeah. So here's the, here's the data that I caught. So this is according to business of apps.com. I'll put a, I'll put a link in the show notes.

Previously Bing was not in the top 3000 most downloaded iOS apps. So this was, let's say a few months ago, there was, let's say they're the top 4000 app, which is not very impressive considering, by the way, I also misspoke the other day. I wanted to clean this up. I said the other day that Bing did six, I think 6.8 billion in annual revenue that was old data that was from 2019 last year in 2022 google sorry funny for you didn't slip there bing did 10 billion dollars in advertising revenue um over their search products so again we talk about it like it's we joke about it oh there's this little brother that gets beat up on but maybe the little

brother is like hitting puberty and fighting back a little bit i don't't know. Like he still can't beat up his bigger brother yet, but so the data to come back to that from business of apps.com. So in order to get on the chat GPT waitlist, you have to sign up and download the app. At least I did. I'm on the waitlist now. I haven't got let in yet. Certainly when I get let in, maybe we can do a quick update about that. Um, but 1 million people, according to Microsoft signed up for the waitlist in 48 hours, which is unbelievable. And they went from getting, again, less than, what did I say, 3,000 downloads a day to 300,000 downloads a day, according to the most recent data, which is here from February 9th, which as our recording is about four days ago.

So yeah, pretty interesting spike in usage. And people that are using it are posting screenshots all over Twitter I'm following and are like, this is pretty good. Writing sources, like it's getting links and credit. It's summarizing things, news very well well like stuff that's happening right now that seems to be the major shift between actually using the chat gpt interface and using like the bing layer on top of it is bing can like bing could tell us like who won the super bowl last night chat gpt can't because it's all based on old training data so a fascinating look at things and i think that like i said i still

think bing should rebrand but i don't know like they're on the right path now at least like they're getting more people to check out the product. The product is now has something in it that appears to be better than Google. Like what was the complaint or criticism of Bing before? What was better about it than Google? The answer was nothing, right? In fact, the results tended to be worse, but now they have something that they can actually stick their flag in the ground that say, Hey, this is better. We're partnering with this platform. And then like you said, Google kind of panicked maybe a little bit, introduced something that was half done and they got egg on their face. We'll see where this all ends up. I'm not giving up on a Google quite yet and a Sundar. I think that would be stupid to do,

but it's competition is good. Competition is healthy. I like competition in the search space. I think it's good for everybody here listening and things like that. And like you said, Polish, we'll just keep people apprised as we learn and update new things. And we'll drop links in the show notes so people can dig around and learn a little bit more about what's going on. Speaking of things that go on, one thing that goes on in every single vacation manager's business is property description. So I thought we'd do a deep dive episode today into the humble at times, sounds simple enough, property description. So I have a bit of an interesting history here. So I actually acquired a company back in October of 2020 called Guestest Hook and I don't typically talk

about them a ton on the show talk more about the build-up side of things but I'll put some links in the show notes and things like that to Guest Hook so people can check that out but basically what that service is today you can go sign up for it and buy property descriptions from Guest Hook and they are written by professional copywriters not by AI they're written by professional copywriters who created a really I believe well-structured template for how to make a property description. I have a whole outline here. We'll go through that. Maybe we'll go back and forth on each section, but I'd love to hear your background on property descriptions or how you got, what's your take on them? How important are they? Should we care about them?

Do they matter at all? What's your takeaway on all the, on these? Yeah, this is when I started in the space, I didn't get to start on the marketing side. I was a junior writer at resortsandlodges.com writing property descriptions. And a lot of this turned into, now at that time it was for resorts, hotels, lodging, all those other things. But as that company shifted into more of the vacation rental space, we did have a directory and that's what we started to do. We started to write out and really, in some cases, we were using an API to take those property descriptions in. But what we realized right away is that, oh, boy, these need a lot of work.

And I really don't feel like putting these out on the site. So that was, I would say, I've probably written in the neighborhood of hundreds. I don't think I'm quite to the thousands list. But writing and rewriting these accommodation descriptions, property descriptions, it maybe brings up a little bit of PTSD for me. Just based on, again, when you're writing volume, that's all I was doing. Your eyes glaze over a little bit. Yeah, that's certainly happened a few times. I think when you're doing that type of volume, what it teaches you is those differentiators, how to really set yourself apart, how to set

this particular property apart, how to go through and looking through the outline that you have. I wish I would have had an outline like this because it is a lot of it. I missed some of these parts or I accentuated parts that probably weren't going to drive as much value as ultimately some of this heavy or important content is. So it is, I'm going to say I have a love hate relationship on the property description side of things. But I also would say that because I wrote so many of those, it's why I have the familiarity with a lot of these smaller locations

and destinations that I do. So yeah, it's been an interesting relationship with property descriptions, but at the very minimum, I know that they play a huge role in how travelers find you and how travelers understand what actually is going to make their stay special. So yeah, I think that's my little background there.

Yeah, I've always heard the expression around photography for a photo is worth a thousand words and all that kind of stuff. So I think before I got into the space, when I first started working just like on these pages in general, I always thought like the photography is most important. And I still think that to be clear, I still think that photography is probably the most important thing. Certainly, we can write the most beautiful description of all time, if it was accompanied with bad photos, listings not going to book. But I do that if the photos are queen or king, right, then the description is maybe at least prince or princess, right? I think

it's a secondary thing. It's not the most important thing. But I think that ultimately, it's a key part of getting conversions. And my logic on this is that people are coming on your description. If they're reading it, number one, they're reading the section that they care about. So we've shown this people in the past, the outline that we're going to go through here in the next few minutes. And they've said, oh, like that's a lot, like having 200 words here and 300 words here and 500 words here. Like this is going to be a relatively beefy description. And I said, if the property is very simple, we may not actually need that whole length to describe a one bedroom condo. But we have clients come to us all the time with seven bedroom luxury houses. And I'm like, we need every single inch of this description

to be talking about how amazing this property is. And we need a structure in a way so people can skim and find the section they care about. And there's going to be people that are not going to book this because you didn't talk about the chef's kitchen and the stovetop you have and the fact you have two fridges and things like that. And I'm like, we're going to lose the booking because they don't have what I call comprehensive information. So it's not necessarily that people are going to read the entire description, but they're going to read the things that matter to them. They're going to self-select and lean towards shade towards the things that do matter to them. And that's where I think the description does its job is it takes that person who's

interested in booking and it tips them just over the edge so that they go, okay, I've now read it. I've seen the photos. I see the reviews. I know it's this collective like trust that they're building towards booking with you, especially if it's direct booking versus an OTA booking. And once they see a well-written description, our data has shown us that people just get a little bit more comfortable. The conversion rate goes up just a little bit. And I think that overall, the way that you structure this description is important because I see a lot of what I'm sure you didn't do, but maybe you saw it first, which is just walls of text, just lots of information. You don't really break up the text and things like that. Let's go through the headline or sorry, the outlines a little bit. But the first thing up

is the headline. Hence my slip there. So the headline is the initial kind of thing that people see. Now there's different ways this is going to show up, right? So I think that's worth describing that in some level of detail here. Now on a listing site, this is, I believe, more of a marketing copywriting aspect. On a most property managers that we work with, most rental managers we work with, it tends to be usually the property name. And we always talk about like having unique property names where possible and having names that other people don't have. So this is used slightly differently. And some PMS systems that I've been in the past, they actually have different fields, like Airbnb headline versus like website headline. I think that's ideal from a software perspective,

because you probably don't want to have the same headline on Airbnb that you do your own website, it tends to look a little bit like awkward, in my opinion, on your website, it's like you're not really competing for clicks, for the most part, right? It's like every click is going to your property. So it's more making them a little bit more unique, a little bit more identifiable. That's where I think a name makes more sense, a marshmallow cabin or whatever. But on a listing site, I think a headline is a piece of marketing copy in the sense that you want them to click on your listing or one that you manage versus all the other hundreds, if not thousands of listings on Airbnb. So the headline typically can be around 30 to 50 characters in our experience. Airbnb now limits it to 32 characters

based on the data that we have today. So you got to make every word count. If you can highlight unique selling point, I think that's important. What sets the property apart? Does it have a stunning view? Does it have a hot tub? Is there a prime location? I don't think that it makes a lot of sense to put in the information about like bedrooms, bathrooms, sleeps, pet friendly.

I know those are often used in the headlines, but I disagree with that because all that information is in the listing itself, right? Like people can easily click through and see that it's a four bedroom. So I think you're wasting your space in the headline. You have so little space to include that it's a four bedroom up there. I think it's your space in the headline. You have so little space to include this four bedroom up there, I think is a little bit

silly in my opinion. So I don't typically recommend that. And then also emojis. We used to leverage the heck out of emojis when we had more space on Airbnb in particular. Airbnb is now very against emojis and they don't want you to use them. They still allow them, but they don't want you to use them. And if you go look at top listings on Airbnb today, just do an undated search and put in like USA, you'll rarely see a lot of emojis in the top results there. So I don't think that emojis are where you can typically

see a lot of success on the headline side. And they Yeah, it's about being descriptive. It's about descriptive and unique. If you could figure out things that are descriptive about the property, and then make the property unique, some properties, this is very easy. Some it's a little bit more hard, obviously. But if you can hit on those two things, I think you have a good kind of structure to a headline. So not to trigger your PTSD, but I'm sure you wrote some headlines in your day. So what's kind of your perspective on the way you put together these headlines for success? Yeah, I think that was really, that's where a lot of PTSD came from is that when we pulled through a lot of the headlines and you did, you really questioned, what is this actually talking about? And I do.

what is this actually talking about? And I do. And I think that a lot of it is from the property management systems and that at that time, we weren't thinking about all the aspects. I think a property management system at that point was still a property management system. It's how you ran the business. It's not the marketing arm. I think as we've gotten input as an industry, we have done a better job of, or some property management systems have done a better job of some property management systems have done a better job of really being able to define and customize that the any of these fields, but I think headlines, especially because that's all some people are going to see it is I think the my balance was always making it eye catching without making it look unprofessional. And I think that's a struggle for me when I'm reading a lot of these descriptions

and even looking through Airbnb or looking through one of the listing sites. It's okay. For me, this, like the all caps or this or that, or like the little visual cues that you can do, they don't work. And it's emojis. They always felt a little, again, acute, but not exactly professional or anything like that. Now, when you're trying to sell, it doesn't use what you're going to use, use, use what you can back up, use what's going to be effective. But that's really the key is being able to differentiate yourself in some of those markets where, yeah, there are three different bear getaways or six different honeymoon hideaways or this and that. I think

the name's great. The descriptions were great, but you got to put it together in a way that it is. I think it's really about that persona. Identifying that persona, what are they actually looking for and putting that content in the headline? Because if you only get that chance, you better knock the headline out of the park i think that's my look at those overall outlook at those headlines is that more often than not it just felt for a long time like we were just trying to be eye-catching and not as professional and descriptive so now i've seen i have seen definitely a shift in in a little more uniformity there and i do i think that probably has some something to do with the property management systems or how people are inputting their rentals that way. Yeah, I think that in the advances in PMS software, having more fields and being able

to show data on the different sites is important. And we have some people we talk to, we look at the sites initially, and we go like, you don't know how to use your PMS software in the right way. I'm doing that thing, aren't I? Where it's like ATM machine, I'm doing that thing with PMS software. So property management system software. Anyways, but yeah, it's all good. Once you know how your software works,

I think that's having different headlines for listing sites versus your own site is a logical play. Let's move on a little bit. Just the interest of getting through the template here. So the next piece that I have is the short description. So this is typically the initial pieces, if you will, of like the summary is a good way to think about it. So a short description is typically,

let's say 400 to 500 characters or so. So having a short description starts with like the name of the property and the host. So for example, I have an example here in our documentation that I have the template where it's like Conrad's cool cabins hosts Conrad's getaway cabin or something like that, right? It mentions the name of the property and the name of the property manager or host quickly so that those that might want to go off platform can do so easily and more straightforward without really needing to worry about the actual elements of what's set up there. So I think having that piece in there is really important describing like this is where I think it is okay to dig into here's the number of bedrooms, here's the number of bathrooms, here's a general overview of the

property amenities, things like that accommodation, and then any unique features, you can go into a little bit more detail. Let's say in the headline, you're able to mention the fact that it had stunning views and the short description, you can be a little bit more specific. It has stunning views of the ocean, of the water, or whatever the case may be. You could highlight the location. Just highlight, not really go into detail. We'll talk a little bit further about what highlighting the location might look like. But the neighborhood or area or property is located in, again, if someone's visiting, they might want to know, hey, this is a two-minute walk from this notable landmark, or this is a five- minute walk from this thing.

Any sort of amenities that are worth mentioning, I think are okay to put in the short description. So what we call them are key features or key amenities. I don't think you want to mention like, hey, there's a washer and dryer. I just don't think that's the right place and time for that sort of mention in the short description. But again, hey, we have really fast Wi-Fi. We have a chef's kitchen. We have a hot tub.

We have a private pool. Those are notable amenities. These are key amenities that people are going to bias towards booking. So I think that's worth keeping inside of the short description. And then yeah, just keeping it concise. Again, this section for us in our template typically is between 400 and let's say 550 characters or so. It's usually about a three or four sentence run up here. But this is the piece that will get read the most. So if I only had this few sentences to pitch this property to a prospective guest, what are the things that I would say? And that's what we include in that short description field.

So yeah, your thoughts on the way that you'd structure this like initial teaser, if you will, before you get into the meat of each of the different sections of the template. Yeah, I think you hit it on the head quick pitch. That's what you're looking for. You're looking not too much, not too little trying to, I think highlighting those key amenities is critical. That's something that I think we shifted what we thought those key amenities were in the COVID times where that fast fast wifi as part of the description became a lot more important, especially in some of those mountain markets where it is, if you were going to do distance learning or anything like that, you really wanted to, or working from working know or working remotely, that became a much more important factor. So I think really it is, it's highlighting whatever

is going to drive the most, what are the key three to five key things that drive the most engagement with this particular unit? And that's something, go back to reviews and look at what people, what did people say they liked about it? Make sure you're hitting on those two to three things, three to five things in that short description. And then you've got full accommodations detail to fill everything else in. Yeah, no, that makes sense to me for sure. Let's go on then. So I think now that you've got like a headline, you've got intro text. This is, I think where we really get into the meat of the description. So we call this next section on Airbnb, it's called the space, but we call it accommodations detail. So this, the space or accommodations detail section is where I think where we really get into the meat of the description. So we call this next section on Airbnb, it's called the space, but we call it accommodations detail. So this the space or accommodations detail section is where I think you get into the weeds, right? This is where, you know, general

overview, right? Here's the layout of the property. Here's the number of bedrooms, the bathrooms, here's any common areas that you might have, but we have describe each room is like the most important piece of this section. So in the master bedroom, or the main bedroom, there is the specific things, there is this, there's a king the main bedroom there is these specific things there is this there's a king-size bed there is large windows with views of the ocean there is a private ensuite bathroom with a rainfall showerhead right giving people a little bit of a sense of what's in there and people will read this people are saying can't they just look at the photos and say yes they can but they're going to read this and consume it and understand what's there because

the photos can't show everything right a photo can show like a layout of a room but it may not actually necessarily explain like the size of the smart TV. You can't tell that from a photo or the actual nature of where the, excuse me, the master bedroom is compared to like other areas in the house and things like that. So having a detailed description of each room is absolutely critical to understanding like what those different sections are and having everything laid out there. So that can take some time. So this section is typically three to 500 words. And especially in a larger property, it takes some time to go through everything. Detailing any common areas. So if there's common areas like a living room, kitchen,

living room, kitchen, outdoor spaces, talk about those. Is there a fire pit in the backyard? What's necessary there? And then what we say is highlight the quality of the property and the descriptive language. So don't just say there's a kitchen, but say there's a kitchen with sub-zero fridge, which is like a very high fridge brand, right? Going through and things that are not necessarily exactly obvious in photography can be made obvious through descriptive language with each piece of that kind of space or accommodations detail section. So this is kind of where you get in the weeds. What's your thoughts on getting into those weeds and how that impacts conversions and things like that? Yeah. Yeah, I think and this was really an opportunity when we got into the general deep dive overview

was the walkthrough. That's what I described as what are you going to get when you walk through? And now this wasn't something where we were walking through the property specifically, but you are. You're trying to give people that tour of what they're going to expect when they walk in. There shouldn't be much surprise, hopefully, if you're doing a good job here as to the experience that someone's going to get when they walk in the house.

Yeah, I think it's where you start name dropping brands. This is where you say, I mean, that's because there is there's going to be some brand allegiance here. And that's going to make a difference. If you say we have a Keurig coffee maker or a Sony flat screen TV or some XYZ, that's going to make a difference. I remember people would put gaming consoles in and they put they made sure it's not gaming consoles it's an xbox or a ps whatever so i do i think that's where you really start to because it is you're going to talk about you're going to go into greater depth further down with features and stuff like that and more of the interaction experience but this

is that initial this is your if you're not if you don't have a 3d tour this is that initial, this is your, if you're not, if you don't have a 3D tour, this is your opportunity to write out the 3D tour that someone's going to take when they're walking through the unit. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good way to think about it, right? All the details, all the facts matter in this kind of section. And this is where people will ultimately, I think, skip over certain pieces here. This won't get read like anywhere near a hundred percent. And this is where I think we've had some agreements with disagreements

with people in the past where they think, oh, that's a lot of detail to go into. And I'm like, yes, but someone's going to read that whole thing and it's going to tip

them over the edge. That that piece right there we're talking about the like you said, that has PS4. Someone's 13 year old kid is going to be super happy that there's PS4

at the vacation rental and he can play his games. And that's going to that's going to make someone's experience go from nice to really nice. And so talking about that mentioning that was worth is worthy of mention things like that. So yeah, that's the meat of it, right? That's like, if you could really do one section, I think it's like the headline would be number one,

and then accommodations details slash the space would be number two, I think you can phone in on the rest of these and probably survive. You don't want to do that, right? You want to thrive. So let's move into the next one. So the next one is what we call other things to note. So you can put this in different places, by the way, but this is where you have to mention the bad if there is bad. And every once in a while, like I think there might be cases where there may not really be any negatives about a property, like or very few negatives, but in some in most every property that you stay in, there's some reason that a guest would not be happy staying there. And I think in the things to note section is where you have to dive into that. For example, like if there's any negative aspects of the

property, is the property near a road where there'll be road noise? If you don't indicate, you can't really show that in photography. So this is a section of my opinion where photography doesn't get it all. If you want to talk about the fact that it's near a road, you wouldn't really want to show a property and then show the road right next to it in many cases. Is it near other properties? Like I have a client that i worked with for many years who's in a cabin market a more rural market and some cabins he photographs i don't even know intentionally but he just photographs them where he doesn't show the proximity of the cabin to the left or right of the cabin so it looks like it's set in the woods and it looks like maybe it's a little more private than it is then you get there and literally two

feet outside the frame of the shot is another cabin and he's got negative reviews before not because there's anything wrong with the property, but because they said, oh, the photos were misleading on the website. And we thought we were having more maybe privacy than we actually were. Like we'd walk out in the morning in the back deck and there'd be someone 100 feet away from us or 200 feet away from us on their cabin back deck. And I see where they're coming from.

I don't completely disagree with the guest in that scenario. So this is where I think other things to note is where you can talk about that. Hey, you're about 250 feet from cabin A, you're about 350 feet from cabin B, whatever those are called. It may even actually be cross promotional marketing opportunity there. Someone may want to book both cabins because they have a large group and it doesn't fit into one cabin. So it might actually be not necessarily a negative thing. But then later on when that guest says, Hey, like I was really close to this person. You can say, Hey, look, and other things to know on our

property descriptions, we just try to be super honest about the condition of the property. We try to be honest about where the property is located and in this case like we told you okay there's gonna be some road noise hey we told you there's gonna be some um there's gonna be cabin about a few hundred feet away from you talked about that and then try to frame in a positive light so with the road noise example the example i think i have in our little sample here is suggest earplugs so hey there might be some road noise so we've left complimentary earplugs in the welcome kit check for out those next to the fridge or something like that. That way, in a scenario that you're not necessarily comfortable with that noise, you can pop in

the earplugs and have a restful night's sleep and wake up and have a great day the next day. So try to frame it positively in some respect, but be honest, don't sugarcoat it and say you won't hear any red noise, but it's near road. Don't lie. I think that's where you get in trouble. But I think this is the section where you can let the guests know and they've just read all the good things about the property. So now let them know about any drawbacks in my frame too. So your thoughts on this, or did you see this a lot when you were reviewing descriptions or was everything just perfect and rosy?

We should have done more things tonight. I think that's something we really didn't. And I think part of that is being on site versus just a remote writer doing something like that. You really do need to know what's happening on site to be able to give some of this additional information. Or you need to be able to feel comfortable, if they're utilizing a guest hook, giving that information to make sure that the content writer is producing the best possible description. Because this is,

I think this is really important as far as setting expectations. It is, we do work in a lot of those remote, peaceful locations in the mountains, which as beautiful as they can be, they can cause some issues in the more technical, technological world that we live in. So yeah, I think that this is a, it's a no brainer. And I think that you are going to, hopefully, again, if people are reading through, it's a no brainer. And I think that you are going to, hopefully, again, if people are reading through, it's still incumbent upon people to read through a description and understand this is what's happening. But you're gonna, I would say, reduce your negative reviews slightly, probably a little more than slightly, you're not going to get rid of all of them. But I think just

being upfront about this, there's much less of a leg to stand on for a bad review or negative feedback from someone when they said, well, I didn't know. No, we're pretty clear that this is exactly what it was going to be. Now, I'm sorry that you didn't read it as explicitly as you should have, but it's on you a little bit there. Yeah, I think that's all you can do in these scenarios is, again, if the guest doesn't consume that information, which some may not and complains later, it's a CYA type move, right, in some respect. But ultimately, it could be something that you put into your onboarding emails as well, or your confirmation emails as well with the guest.

Hey, just make sure you checked out the other things to note section. We've confirmed your booking. However, these are things you might want to be aware of as you get ready to enjoy your stay at our property, that sort of thing. So yeah, I think that's an important section. Again, some people put that at the very end. I'm not opposed to that. I think that's fine. But I think it's an important piece of the description itself is to highlight any possible negatives. So we can move on to the next one, which is what we call the neighbor, what Airbnb

calls the neighborhood, we just call this location description. So it's what it sounds like what's in the area. In some cases, this may be very detailed, or in some cases, it may be not very detailed. The answer may be there's nothing to do in the area. And that's why you're coming and staying in this property is there's there's skiing trails, there's hiking trails, there's lakes, there's rivers, you go fishing, and that's the appeal of it, obviously, in a more rural market. In an urban property, it might be this is five minutes here, it's 10 minutes to here, it's we stayed in a short term rental one time in Boston. And it was like, you are two minutes from the orange line, but walk out the property and go here and walk down the street, and you're on the orange line. So that was very useful to know because we could then plan our trip around,

okay, we're going to take this to this and kind of plan our public transit based on that. So that was super useful to have that information, but focus on the highlights of the location, any popular attractions, outdoor recreation, dining options, I think are worth sliding in here. So if you have like restaurants or hey, we you're only 25 minutes from the best pizza place in all of Charlotte, North Carolina, or whatever the case may be, shoppingping or any sort of like attractions in that respect. Be descriptive. So again, like descriptive language. So don't just say it's a local farmer's market, or don't just say it's a farmer's market, excuse me, say it's a local farmer's market. Or don't just say that you're near the streets, but that you're near the bustling streets or that you're around friendly

locals and things like that. Give distances. So again, explain you are one mile from this, you are half a mile from this, that sort of thing. And then any insider tips I think are super useful too. We really love Giorgio's head down on Cooper street and take a left here, walk over here and you're at Giorgio's, they have the best chicken parm and all of whatever. That kind of stuff I think bodes well in this neighborhood location description. And it sells not just the, again, another thing that photography can't show. It doesn't just sell the property, but rather where the property is set and located as a broader picture of the actual area itself, right? Why would I want to stay in this location versus another one? I think it's a good time to slide that stuff in. What are your what's

your perspective on the neighborhood pieces? I think really hope hopefully you're mimicking this or at least echoing some of this content on the blog on blog side of things or in some of the additional content on your website. I think this is something that it is hopefully it is in the description but i think it's another that's additional content that should be showing up on other places of the website as well so i think it's very important as people are planning a trip there are very few people who i think people have gone away from using the vacation rental side of things for business travel now that may come back in the short term where you have quick turnarounds, quick stays, stuff like that. But it is a lot of people are looking for a two day getaway, a three day getaway, a week long getaway.

And in that case, you are going to want to plan more of a vacation or a trip. And where are you going to need to do that? All of the things that people can do while we're there. So, yeah, I think that this is a very important section of the description itself. And again, hopefully it's something that you're leveraging that content as well in other parts of the website so that people can plan their trip elsewhere. I think easily on your own direct booking website, those can be internally linked to here's our full restaurant recommendation. Here's our awesome things to do page and stuff like that. I agree with you. We actually haven't done that enough. That's something I could consider looking at and adjusting going forward.

The next section we can fly through pretty quickly. It's just the getting there and transit section. So on Airbnb, it's called transit. We call it getting there. And basically this is, it's seven miles from this major highway. The best airport to fly into is MYR. The best airline to depart from is MYR or go into this area. So again, maybe people are coming for, they've never been to the area before.

And they just like that local host recommendation with respect to travel. Like you may, your GPS may send you down tuber street, but it might make more sense to go up blah, blah, blah Avenue, right? That kind of stuff could just help people feel a little more comfortable. And again, I think it fits into the kind of this major theme that you have of like being great host. I think being great host is thinking about the property, thinking about the stay and thinking about the ease of navigation of your guests too. I think that's an important consideration is this in this kind of overall process. So these are typically pretty short, 50 to 100 words. It's usually pretty sufficient to just cover a few different pieces.

Again, you're not Google or Google Maps or anything. You're going to give them a few hints about how to get there. So I'm not sure if you have anything to add on that one, but just. Nah, we're good on that one. We can keep going after that one. Right on. So the next one I have is also pretty short, which is that how do you interact with the guest?

Again, I think a lot of managers used to do this a lot differently. I think this has shifted completely, honestly, over the past few years. Maybe COVID accelerated what was already happening, which is there used to be clients that I worked with that said, we're not going to get rid of our physical check-in. We like the fact that we have a relationship with the guest personally. I actually talked to one manager a long time ago who said, oh yeah, the guests like coming in here and meeting with us, chatting with us and picking up the keys. And I'm like, really on Saturday, if they've driven hours and they just want to get to the house and relax and then get to the beach. I'm like, I don't think that's true, but I didn't want to disagree. This was earlier in my career. I didn't want to disagree with the client. And that client of course now has keyless check-in on 500 plus locks in their market. I think he realized that maybe guests, when they could go straight to the property and put in the code, favored that a little bit more. You know what? They could still drop by on Wednesday and catch up. It turns out people don't really want to do that. So anyways, just like being clear about what's your level of interaction with the guest. I think this is something that some people just might want to know, are you going to come and check on me like that in a concierge property,

that might be a good experience. We did a month long stay in Cape Coral several years ago, and they were very explicit in their documentation. And the day after check in, we're going to come check in with you. I wonder perhaps to verify a number of occupants and things like that month long stay, they might just want to make sure, hey, is this kind of a legit thing? So maybe that was part of it, but they framed it more, hey, we're going to come check in with you. I wonder perhaps to verify a number of occupants and things like that month long stay, they might just want to make sure, hey, is this kind of a legit thing? So maybe that was part of it. But they framed it more, hey, we're going to check on you, we're going to show you how to heat the pool, we're going to show you how to turn things off, show you to turn things on. And he was very nice and very helpful. And we appreciate that gave us a few restaurant recommendations. So it was a good experience. I definitely would say that's

positive thing. Now with most shorter stays, that's typically not what you're doing. Most clients I work with aren't doing any sort of in person interaction these days days. But if that is the case, talk about it. There's an on-site team. There can be an on-site team if you want there in a resort or condo type environment. Call us, we're up. We can come up to your place and help you. We have maintenance teams, etc. So that may be something to talk to a little bit. If you need anything during your stay, we're just a call away. We have a local team. If you're remote and there's other things there, talk about that. Yeah, I don't know if you have anything to add there, just to highlight the importance of what level of interaction you have with the guests,

basically. Yeah. This is something that interaction with guests is on the homeowner side. It's a huge value. That's something that the professional property managers really talk a lot about. It is, it's about that 24 seven support. So I think it is important to note that there will be someone there if you need the help. But I think that in general, I think there has been a shift in how interaction with guests takes place. And maybe it is. Maybe it's ease of use. Maybe it's the streamlining of the check-in, check-out process, all that.

Or maybe it's just that we're scared of people now. I can't really pin it down to exactly there. But I think you certainly don't want to surprise people. So I think this is a great section to be able to really tell them how you manage. And are you more of a hands-on manager? Are you more of a hands-off manager? And this is a good example. Good reason, good way to do that.

And honestly, you might attract certain people who like your hosting style and want that kind of interaction. Or you might repel people that don't want that. And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's your product you're offering. Your hosting managing style is somewhat unique to you in some respect. And again, I think that's not necessarily that thing. So one more thing on that, this is our next section. And we just have one more before we put a bow on this one, which is about the host or manager. So this is just a bio,

it sounds simple enough, but you'd be shocked how often I see these and they're horribly filled out. They don't talk at all about like, how they're excited about hosting you, they don't talk at all about what their name is. So with companies, this can be a little bit challenging, but we have clients who I think do a really good job of, Hey, we are company name, right? And we're, and then they put in parentheses like John, Mary, and Steve, and we're going to be reaching out to you and we're going to be helping you and things like that. Just things like that can make a difference. Now, if you're super, super large and super corporate, if you're one of these national property managers that has 8,000 people in your customer support team, then I get it. That might not be possible

or feasible to do. But if you're a small business, like a lot of the ones that we work with in a leisure market and a vacational market, saying that, hey, it could be Alyssa or John or Mark that reaches out to you, but we're the team here at Paul's Cool Cabin Rentals, and we're looking forward to chatting with you and hosting you, that can be a management angle. Obviously, if you're a property manager yourself and you're responding to messages, just having a little bit of background about you, why are you interested in the area? What got you interested there? When I came to the Outer Banks as a kid, I loved it. And then when I was able to return in my forties and open a vacational company, I was just thrilled and we love sharing the beauty of the beach with you. Just things like that. It's like people want

to know that there's a person behind the stay that they can relate to and they can perhaps have some affinity towards. Simple enough, but a lot of people skip this or they do it very poorly. So this actually shows up one time across every listing. So it can be the same bio. You don't need a unique bio for every property. I think that would be redundant. But yeah, introduce yourself, share your story, highlight your experience and express your enthusiasm. Like I'm excited to have you.

We're looking forward to hosting you. I think these are things that are worthy of that about the host slash about the manager section. What's your thoughts on that? We talked about branding in the past, but I think that's just an element of branding. What's that message that you're going to give to the guests? Yeah, that's, I think it is. It's just making sure that you are using it

as a branding opportunity. I think that's the biggest letdown is that you're not describing, you're not keeping the uniformity of your branding that you're using everywhere else. Being able to connect more to a manager on a more of a personal level is helpful. It's going to, it's going to make that guest feel a little more comfortable after we just said, maybe they're afraid of people in the previous section here, but it is, I think, for different people, this is going to be a much more important section. And I think that's the preface we put on any of these sections above is that you want to write all of it, but you don't know how much, how little someone's going to consume, what's actually going to drive their decision to make that purchase. That's why we're explaining it in as granular a detail as we are, because the best listings are going to have all these pieces, are going to have all these aspects, are going to have all these important pieces of content or all this important information in place. Yeah, it's just that kind of that last chance to make sure that your branding is in line with everything else you've done.

Yep, right on. The last section then is guest access. And this one's very straightforward. Basically, how can I access the property? So again, people want to know, is there a door code? Is there a key? Something like that. So provide details, we will send you a door code three days before your arrival one day before your arrival, whatever your policy happens to be. Just let people know. I think that's one thing that people are always a little bit worried about, right? Especially in this new remote hosting environment is am I going to get there? Am I going to be able to get in there's that 10% of your mind that I felt that way, too. I felt that way with the clients that I worked with for three years and then they give me a door code and I think, is this door code actually going to

work when I get there? And I'm saying one of their properties. I think that's a simple thing, but just giving them ease. Hey, we have a solid system. Here's the door code. You're going to get it at this timeframe. And that way you don't get the inevitable question. And some of these, by the way, as a broad level thing, just finish this up here. Some of the information that we put in here is going to cut down on your reservation questions a lot and it's going to be able people are going to be able to answer their own questions at a higher clip so that's going to help your conversions too if there's not a delay between oh is there two fridges or is there just one fridge and that you put that in the accommodations detail in the space section and then boom you just got someone who was

previously going to ask a question to your reservation team and slow them down to be honest with you and not maybe make them as productive as they could be. And now we've got that there. So I think the guest access section does that well. It's like, how are you going to get in? Sounds simple enough, but guests want to know and they want to feel comfortable that you have a plan for access. And then maybe you want to mention something in there.

And the event of any problem, we're there. We can be there in five minutes to fix anything and get you right in. So yeah, just to outline it really quickly, there's a headline, there's a short description or a summary. There's an accommodations detail, what Airbnb calls the space. There's a features description. There's a location description. There's a getting there section. There's an

interaction with guest section. There's an about the host section. And then there's a guest access session. That's all you need. If you do that, you have a perfect property description. So anything else you want to add on? Or does that put a good bow on creating this perfect property description to get more bookings? Sounds like a pretty good bow on putting that property description together, I'd say. All right. Phenomenal. Thanks so much, Paul, as always for hosting with me today. We appreciate the reviews. If you could leave a review, we would really appreciate it. If you have any questions about property descriptions, do let me know. Or you can actually check out guestook, guestook.com. Consider them the unofficial sponsor of this particular episode

of the Heads and Beds show. Our team over there will do a phenomenal job of taking care of you and writing one of these descriptions for you so you can have a phenomenal description for your property or properties. Thanks so much. We'll catch you on the next episode. Thank you.