What belongs in your holiday rental listing

Photos: how many and which

Across our 222 live properties the number of photos varies widely. Half show sixteen or more, a quarter show twenty or more, and the fullest listing has a hundred and ten. At the other end sit forty-five properties with fewer than ten photos, and two with fewer than five.

The count is not the whole story, but under ten it becomes a problem. A guest booking a week with their family wants to see the bedrooms, the bathroom, the kitchen and the outside space. If one of those four is missing, they fill it in themselves, and rarely in your favour.

The first photo does most of the work, because it is the only one that appears on a results page. Pick the image there that says most clearly what kind of property this is, not your finest close-up. A laid table is a lovely image and a poor first image.

For a bed and breakfast a rule of its own applies: the first photo of a room shows the bed. That sounds obvious and it regularly goes wrong, with a bathroom or a view in first place. Anyone booking a room wants to know where they sleep.

The description, and why four languages

All 222 properties with us carry a description in Dutch, French, German and English. That is no accident but a condition: we publish on four domains, and a property without French text sits on the French domain with no description.

What a good description does is complement the photos rather than repeat them. The photo shows the kitchen; the text says whether there is a dishwasher, how many people fit comfortably at the table, and whether the hob runs on gas or induction. Those are the things a guest would otherwise have to ask about.

Be clear too about what is not there. No lift, a steep staircase, an unfenced garden, the nearest shop six kilometres away: that belongs in it. A guest who reads it beforehand and books anyway is satisfied. A guest who discovers it on arrival writes a review about it.

Finally, state your registration number. It is required in every listing in all three Belgian regions, including on your own website. With us it sits visibly on the property page, so a guest can check it themselves without having to ask.

Reviews, and why they weigh more than your own text

One hundred and sixty-eight of our 222 properties have a link to their Google reviews, and one hundred and sixty-two show a score. The median of those scores is 4.8, with a low of 3.5 and a high of 5.

That score does something no sentence in your description can: it does not come from you. A guest knows you are promoting your own property, and therefore looks for somebody else saying something. Fifty-four properties with us lack that link and so miss the one piece of evidence that is not their own.

A lower score is less damaging than no score. A 4.2 with forty reviews reads more credibly than a property without a single review, because the first was checked by forty people and the second by nobody. So do not hide a middling score, but make sure there is one.

What we do not do is add those scores up into a figure of our own. They come from Google and belong there; we show them and link through. An average we calculated ourselves out of other people's reviews says nothing and is not permitted by search engines either.

The order to tackle it in

Start with the photos, because that is where the decision falls. If you are under ten, first top up until you have the four spaces everyone wants to see. That weighs more than any sentence you add alongside.

Then go through the description and cut what the photo already shows. What remains leaves room for the practical: distances, facilities, house rules and what is absent. A description that gets shorter and more concrete works better than a longer one.

Then add your review link if you do not have one yet. That is a single field and the only part of your listing that adds credibility without you claiming anything.

And finally check that your registration number is there and correct. We check that at every publication, and at four Flemish properties the number turned out not to exist because of a typing error, three of them already live. It is the smallest effort with the biggest risk when it is missing.

Frequently asked questions

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