The idea is simple: Every holiday rental listing on Getaway Earth receives a score out of 100. The score is an indication of a listing’s standard of presentation and information. It is most definitely not a judgement on the holiday home owner or their property.
What is the Point of a Holiday Rental Score?
We want to increase bookings for our holiday home owners. Listings that are beautifully presented, with high quality, easy to absorb information, are more likely to grab a renter’s attention. Read Google’s 5 stages of travel and you’ll see that the average person visits 22 travel-related websites during 9.5 different sessions before making a booking! We all need to recognise this and grab the holidaymaker’s attention, hold it, and lead them to a booking!
How Does the Score Help This?
The score is designed to help us work through this process together, setting out very clearly what needs to be done to build a holiday rental website with the very best presented listings. But take note: We do not want renters to see anything sub-standard, so any listing with a score of less than 50 will not be returned in the search results on our home page, meaning no chance of bookings. Scores over 50 will display in search results, with the highest scores ranking at the top of those results.
So Tell Me Precisely How I Improve my Holiday Rental Listing Score
Here goes. We’re going to give you full visibility into how the score works. In return we need your help in making the necessary changes to your listing. How can we become successful and deliver you bookings if a renter visits our site and sees something sub-standard? Remember 22 sites in 9.5 sessions. Internet users (like all of us) have no patience and lots of power!
- Delete all existing small photos and upload at least 10 larger format, high quality photos, earning 15 points*
- Complete the short 170 character description, earning 3 points
- Write a clear, concise and informative full description, earning 15 points*
- Write a Meet the Owner Q&A, earning 12 points. Please contact us if you would like to participate.
- Add points of interest, earning up to 9 points
- Add a calendar link and keep it updated, earning 6 points
- Add a weblink to your own holiday rental website, earning 2 points. Please contact charles [at] getawayearth.com if you wish to add a weblink
- Add your Facebook badge if you have one, earning 5 points
- Ask your FB friends to like your Getaway Earth listing (not your FB page), earning 1 point for every 5 likes, up to a maximum of 10 points
- Add your Twitter badge if you have one, earning 3 points
- We will award a further 20 points, according to the overall presentation*
* All 3 items marked with a star will not update instantly. We need to moderate them first. Simply uploading new photos itself won’t earn 15 points. But if those photos are of good quality, are attractive and appropriate, we will award 15 points.
So that’s it. Please remember, this score IS NOT visible to the public. Only you (and us of course) know your holiday rental listing’s score. And once again it IS NOT an uninformed rating of you or your holiday home; we would never dare to attempt this. It’s plain and simple about how well your listing is presented on our site, in turn making it attractive and sticky for a potential renter.
What Should I Consider a Good Score?
At present (22 April 2012) all holiday rental listings have a score of 50+ until we fully moderate them. This will be done over the next couple of weeks so please do not be surprised if your score changes (or even drops below 50 if nothing has been updated).
Here is a quick guide:
0-50: The listing will not be shown on the site
50-60: Average standard
60-70: Good standard
70-80: Very high standard
80+: Excellent
Just a word on this though. 60-70 may seem to many a low score. However bear in mind that a first class honours university degree, the top achievement (in the UK anyway), is awarded when you achieve 70%+. We like to think of it that way!
But I Don’t Have Facebook, Twitter or a Personal Holiday Rental Website
RELAX! You do not necessarily need them. Think about the scoring attributes for a minute. If your listing has good photos, a 170 character short description, a well written full description, a Q&A, and an up to date calendar, then our discretionary 20 points is very likely to be awarded. That will result in a score of 71. But take note: If you then choose to ignore your listing, the 20 points will eventually erode back to zero and a score of 51.
Thanks for reading. We hope everything is clear. Together let’s raise the standard of holiday rental presentation on Getaway Earth, giving ourselves the best possible chance of increased bookings!
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