Every guest arrives to check your work.
A marketplace listing is read by someone who may never see the item. An Airbnb listing is read by someone who will be standing inside it within a fortnight, with a review form waiting.
This is the one listing you should not make more appealing.
Every other kind of advert rewards persuasion. This one punishes it, on a delay. A listing that oversells wins the booking and then loses the accuracy rating, and the accuracy rating is not a comment — it feeds ranking, which is every future booking. The guest is not comparing your flat to other flats. They are comparing it to the listing.
So the thing worth paying for here is not better copy. It is finding the four or five gaps between what your listing implies and what a guest will find, and closing them before someone else closes them in public. Three flights of stairs. A sofa-bed counted as a bedroom. A shared stairwell. A shower over the bath. A street that is loud at the weekend.
There is a wrong way to do this too, and the report is written to avoid it. "The stairs may be difficult for some guests" is not a disclosure, it is an insurance policy, and a guest reads it as one. "Three flights, 48 steps, handrail throughout, no lift" is a disclosure. Specificity is the entire difference: it lets the wrong guest self-select out before they book instead of after they arrive.
Airbnb's own ground rules require the place to match the photos and description, all advertised amenities to be available, and access restrictions to be disclosed. Its standards also prohibit inaccurate location information and images edited to hide flaws or add amenities. Most hosts who fail this are not being dishonest; they are describing the place they know rather than the place a stranger walks into.
A real listing, before and after.
From the Airbnb rubric behind the job. Nothing in the first version is a lie.
Stunning Luxury Apartment in the Heart of Edinburgh ★
Welcome to our beautiful home from home! This stunning apartment is perfectly located in the heart of the city, just moments from all the best attractions, bars and restaurants. Sleeps 6 comfortably in 2 bedrooms. Fully equipped modern kitchen, spacious living area, everything you need for the perfect stay. Guests love the cosy atmosphere and amazing location!
House rules: No parties. No smoking. No pets. No unregistered guests. No noise after 10pm. No shoes inside. Check in 4pm, check out 10am strictly.
Top-floor 2-bed, 6 min walk to Waverley — 3 flights, no lift
A second-floor tenement flat five to six minutes' walk from Waverley station, good for couples, a family of four, or two couples who don't mind one pair being on a sofa-bed. It is not right for anyone who can't manage stairs: three flights, 48 steps, with a handrail throughout, and there is no lift.
The space. Bedroom one: double bed, door locks, window to the rear courtyard. Bedroom two: two single beds, [ADD FACT: does this door lock?]. The sixth sleeping space is a double sofa-bed in the living room — comfortable for a couple, but it is a sofa-bed in a shared room, not a third bedroom.
House rules. No parties — the flat below is occupied and these are wooden floors. No smoking anywhere in the building. Please keep noise down after 10pm for the same reason.
Licence. [MUST SUPPLY: your Scottish short-term let licence number, exactly as your council issued it — it must be displayed on the listing]
The title now carries the differentiator and the disqualifier in the same fifty characters. Six minutes to Waverley sells it; three flights and no lift sends the wrong booking somewhere else, which is the point.
Eight bare prohibitions became three rules with a reason each. A wall of "no" reads as a difficult host; "no parties — the flat below is occupied and these are wooden floors" reads as a person, and gets followed more reliably.
"Guests love the cosy atmosphere" is gone because it is host copy quoting imaginary guests. Review language belongs to reviewers. And "fully equipped modern kitchen" became a request for the actual appliance list, because that is precisely the claim a guest tests on night one.
What you get for £7.
- Paste the listing. Title, description, the sleeping arrangement as you have it written, house rules, and anything in your "other things to note". If you have a licence or registration number requirement where you are, say so — it will ask for the number rather than write around it.
- 7,000 points for £7. This job holds a ceiling of 3,500 and spends only what the report costs, leaving the rest on your balance. Three revisions are included, which is usually enough to get the tone of the house rules right.
- Back comes an expectation audit. A score, the single biggest gap between listing and reality named first, a rewritten title and description in Airbnb's structured sections, and a list of things only you can confirm — the walk time, the appliances, whether the second bedroom door locks.
A generation that fails spends nothing.
Fit.
Worth doing if
- Your accuracy rating is lower than your other ratings, and you cannot see why.
- Your listing says "sleeps 6" and one of those six is a sofa-bed.
- You have stairs, a shared entrance, a bath-shower or street noise and have never mentioned any of them.
- Your house rules are a list of prohibitions with no reasons attached.
- You are about to list for the first time and want the promises checked before anyone can test them.
Not worth doing if
- You want the copy made warmer without the disclosures added. That is the trade this job refuses to make.
- You want a walking distance filled in. It does not know where your flat is and will ask.
- Your licence or registration is the actual problem. It will tell you the number belongs on the listing; it cannot get you one.
- Your photographs are the weak part. It reads words, and it will say so rather than compensating with adjectives.
Have the promise checked.
Paste the listing as a guest sees it. The first thing back is the gap that costs you most.
One payment, no subscription. 7,000 points; this job's ceiling is 3,500 and it spends only what it uses. Three revisions included.