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For those of you that advertise on Vrbo, they are rolling out a new format. I understand it’s to be consistent with Expedia.
There may be other ways to see it, but I can see it using Chrome on a desktop running Windows 10 when I search like I’m a guest. You won’t see it if you type in vrbo and then your property number. Last I checked, it’s also not there yet on the Vrbo app on an iPhone.
Many owners have lost reviews and might have a different overall rating (ours dropped from 5.0 to 4.9 because they dropped almost 40 5-star reviews). Videos are missing. If you edit your description, it may show up as a run-on paragraph. The ability to sort by number of reviews has been removed, and the sort option has been moved to the very end of the filters pop-up.
I do like that you can sort the reviews by rating, including low-to-high. That way, you can quickly see how many reviews are less than 5 and read them to see what the issues were.
I’m not sure if there’s been a change, our “vrbo” is Stayz.com.au but i assume the webpages are all the same, just with a different logo? and yes, my description is now 1 long run on paragraph. No way to fix it, it looks right in the management side.
I confess I don’t really know what it looked like before as I don’t spend too much time diving into vrbo or bdc. I only just noticed that BDC write the property description for us, and mine is appalling.
ha, indeed. although they didn’t do a big marketing song and dance about “awesome new upgrades”.
Stayz has the same format as Vrbo. I can’t guarantee this will fix the run-on paragraph issue, but it did for me:
Insert the html command <br> wherever you typically would hit return. <br> stands for line break. One <br> starts a new line. If you use <br><br>, it will also leave a blank line between your paragraphs.
You can also make text bold. For instance, to make “Our home features” bold, here’s how you would enter that:
<b>Our home features</b>
Vrbo’s isn’t appalling, but it’s not tailored towards vacation rentals. Here’s an example of it from a four-bedroom home in Melbourne (it’s at the bottom of the description):
“Air-conditioned accommodation at this holiday home offers DVD players and a hairdryer. Kitchens offer fridges, stovetops, microwaves and kitchenware and utensils.
Guests can surf the web using complimentary wireless Internet access. Smart televisions are featured in guestrooms.”
So I added at the bottom of my description: The next section was written by the Vrbo AI bot, and may or may not be correct.
Basically they have the suburb wrong, but that’s fine, at least they have a better suburb than the google maps suburb.
What’s wrong? the listing is assuming people come here to hang out in Adl city, and they mention the art gallery, the airport, the Bicentennial Conservatory (nfi what that even is!)… when in fact I’m in a wine region, with some famous names very close by. The only “local” thing they mention is the Giant Rocking Horse which is a family friendly dumb tourist thing, again, this is a food and wine region. They don’t even mention hahndorf, which is Australia’s oldest German village and a big tourist attraction.
This is the equivalent of having an STR in Napa Valley and the AI writes about the proximity to Sacramento and SF instead and failing to mention anything about food and wine, which is the reason you go there, and for the country experience.
I’m searching to see if there’s any way to complain (even though they say you can’t change it), and I checked: it’s equally terrible for everyone in this region.
I see what you mean. Like people are going to book your place so they can drive 43 kms to somewhere else.
And whoever is writing their copy doesn’t even know how to put a coherent sentence together.
“Situated 27 km from Big Rocking Horse, the property features a garden and free private parking.”
What does a tourist trap 27 km away have to do with your garden and parking? The first sentence is the same- pairing “Within 43km of blah blah blah and featuring Wifi and a tennis court.”
Absurd.
I don’t get why these platforms don’t let hosts provide their own descriptions. Obviously hosts know how to describe their listings better than someone sitting in an office somewhere whose probably never been within 10,000 kms of your place.
Reminds me of friends who had govt. contracts to graze sheep in logging cut blocks that had been replanted with little saplings. The sheep eat all the weeds that grow up, but don’t eat the saplings- it was a program to negate the need to spray toxic herbicides.
They got sent to one cut block where no weeds had grown up yet due to weather conditions. They called the govt. office to tell them they couldn’t graze there- there was nothing for the sheep to eat except the saplings. The guy in his office tower in Vancouver insisted over the phone that there must be grazing material- it said so on his maps. They were like, “We’re standing right here on the block looking at the barren ground and you’re telling us it’s not barren?”
Deluxe King Room This double room has a tea/coffee maker, sauna and kitchenware.
I’ve asked them to remove the reference to the sauna (we do have one, a Finnish cedar barrel type - OUTSIDE next to the pool - but it reads like the sauna is inside the suite
a “tea maker” isn’t a thing either. there’s a coffee machine, and a kettle… it doesn’t “make tea” lol
and “kitchenware” uh, nope, you can’t cook. Do they mean “crockery”? plus the important things: wine glasses, cheese knives and a few boards and dishes for your antipasto needs.
that’s the problem with BDC, whoever first set it up did so in the wrong century, and hasn’t bothered to fix it since then. they still call every room a “double room” and simply add large or extra large, it’s totally confusing.
Actually, “kitchenware” to me would include stuff like wine glasses, dishes, some utensils, not pots and pans. “Cookware” would be pots and pans.
“Crockery” isn’t a word used much in the US or Canada. I knew the word, but never heard it used before until I started reading hosting forums with Brit and Aussie hosts.
But kitchenware is such a broad term, people could take it to mean almost anything one would have in a kitchen.
So have you had BDC guests who expected to be able to cook and expected there to be a sauna in the bedroom and a sweet little Japanese tea maker in a kimono to serve them tea in bed?
yes, but as you point out, language use is different and “kitchenware” means ALL the kitchen things, with subcategories like cookware, crockery, cutlery, napery (if we want to get fancy).
yes, they say that and also “written in way to attract more bookings” LOL.
a simple list of items is easily translatable, adding in things like a sauna in the context of the room is just misleading.
And as we note here, the differences between Brit, Aussie, NZ, Canadian and US English is often quite different, so I think they are failing even in the english-language realm.
8 hours later edit: so I put in a request to change the description and it was declined.
From the “English” translation of the manual for my made-in-China industrial serger:
“Main Specifc Ations: The machine series is used for making.
various with 2-5 thread seaming. the exact chioce may be made in accordance with different requirements of seaming. Refore packing the machines, please foolowing the instructions for operating given in this booklet.”
Well, listing the sauna in the bedroom and putting the parking and gardens in the same sentence with the 43km distance to some tourist traps has nothing to do with being easily translated. It’s just terrible writing skills.
