Airbnb, VRBO and Booking.com it has to be said do a very good job with all the marketing millions they spend to introduce potential guests to our properties. Those millions have to come from somewhere however, and after being presented to guests as booking fees, guests will often look elsewhere to avoid paying them. Specifically they will look to book direct and you can make it very easy for guests to do this.
But how can you link your Agency Listing to your Website – surely you can’t?
You should never try to break the terms and conditions of your Agency Agreement.
Your Agreement is likely to forbid you mentioning your website or adding a hyperlink to your website. Trying to add external links to your website will be automatically removed if you do try and add them.
Within your Agency Listing you should create a descriptive link and also a visual link. A descriptive link is simply plain text contained within your Agency listing’s property description that offers enough detailed information for your guest to use in a search engine to find your website.
An example of a good descriptive link could be “Welcome to Honeysuckle Cottage located in Coniston” If your prospective guest chooses to Google ‘Honeysuckle Cottage in Coniston” it should return the website.
However a more general description such as “Welcome to our Holiday Cottage in the Lake District” is going to return a thousand other results when Googling “Holiday Cottage in Lake District”. So you need to be more specific with your description and possibly consider rebranding your accommodation. ‘The Cottage‘ for example is not going to help your property get found easily!
A visual link requires the primary or main photo on your agency listing to be the same image as a photo on the homepage of your website. This gives the guest confidence that they have found the website that matches the agency listing they previously visited.
Simon Hibberd
Owners Websites
