A booking page an assistant can actually read

Most booking pages are built for a person who has already decided and is reaching for a card. They are built less well for the step before that, when an assistant is reading the page on a traveller’s behalf and trying to work out whether this property fits what the traveller said they wanted. A page an assistant can read is not a different page. It is the same page with its facts in the open.

Put the facts in text, not only in pictures

A photo of a pool does not tell a machine the pool is private, heated, or six metres long. A map pin does not say the beach is a four minute walk. Whatever a traveller would ask, answer in words somewhere on the page: bedrooms and what is in them, the real distance to the things nearby, what is included and what costs extra. The gallery stays. It just stops being the only place the information lives.

Name the constraints, not only the selling points

A page that lists only upsides is easy for an assistant to discount, because every listing does that. A page that says who the place is not for, the climb up the steps, the quiet that some people love and others find dull, reads as credible. Credible is what gets recommended. Counterintuitively, writing down a drawback often wins the booking, because the guest who books anyway knew what they were getting and the one who would have complained self-selected out.

Keep one honest, current source of truth

If the price, the capacity, and the availability on the page disagree with the booking engine, an assistant has no way to know which to trust, and neither does a guest. Decide where the authoritative version lives and make the page reflect it. A date on the page saying when it was last checked does real work: it tells a reader, and a model, that the facts are maintained rather than left to rot.