Shortbreaks

Owner FAQ

So how does advertising with shortbreaks.com work?

• register by entering your basic contact details on our property owner registration page
• choose the holiday property advertising service you want
• pay the straight forward, annual subscription fee
• create an advertisement for your property with our easy to use system
• begin receiving booking enquiries directly from potential travellers

How do I receive rental payments for my holiday property?

When a prospective traveller makes contact with you and makes a booking, the property owner (or appointed manager) advertising the property, will need to obtain the payment for the rent on the holiday property. Shortbreaks.com is not involved with the financial transactions relating to the rental of advertised properties.

See our Terms and Conditions for further details.

Creating Your Holiday Property Advertisement

How do I write a good holiday home property page?

When writing your holiday home property page you need to bear two things in mind: firstly, you will need to make your property sound attractive and secondly, where possible, you should aim to make your description search engine friendly, so that your holiday property is listed high up in search engine results pages. It’s a bit of a balancing act addressing these two aims, but it’s pretty easy to achieve, once you are aware of the principles laid out below.

People versus search engines - Remember, if in doubt; focus on making a visit to your property page a helpful and informative experience for the human being reading it, rather than worrying primarily about search engines. However, that said, your secondary consideration is to be looking for any missed opportunities to make your holiday property descriptions search engine friendly.

Writing Search Engine Friendly Property Descriptions

• In particular, when writing your holiday property description headline and the opening phrases of your full description, try to include words and phrases that someone might actually search for in a search engine if they wanted a self-catering property like yours. These should be fairly factual descriptors. For example: 4 bedroom cottage in the Lake District with views or Villa in France with pool, sleeps 6.
• It is good to go for about 4 keywords or phrases and repeat these 2 or 3 times in the course of your property advertisement, but only if you can make this sound natural and helpful to the reader.
• If possible, when writing your headline, get the important keywords and phrases at the front of your headline. But remember - don’t overdo the use of keywords as too much can have a bad effect on your ranking.

Writing Reader Friendly Property Descriptions

• Use superlatives – but not too many – e.g. stunning, unique, spacious, pretty, luxurious, comfortable, exotic, delightful etc..., but don’t use too many at once, otherwise your property advertisement may start to sound corny or unbelievable. No more than two or three at a time is a good guide. Search engine searches tend to be based more on facts than opinions expressed with superlatives, so not over doing the superlatives will help with the balance in addressing both human beings and search engines.
• Use some imperatives - The use of imperatives is a good way to get your reader motivated and involved in your holiday home description. It helps the reader to really begin to imagine themselves enjoying the experience of a holiday in your property. Imperatives are phrases that urge you to do something. e.g Sit on the balcony and enjoy the stunning views or Take a walk around the market square and soak up the atmosphere.
• Be practical – think carefully about all the practical information a holiday maker might want e.g. how many minutes walk to the beach is it exactly; how big is the garden; what services are available such as cooks or taxis or grocery deliveries.

What sort of photographs should I use to promote my holiday property?

When you are selecting your photographs for your advertisement, please aim to consider the following:

• Interior and exterior - Include both interior and exterior shots
• Let there be light - make sure your photographs are well lit. This is probably the most important thing. Take outside shots on a sunny day and make sure your indoor shots make the most of the available light. You might need to switch on electric lights or light a fire in an open fire place or perhaps move all blinds and curtains to one side to make the most of the natural daylight. Sometimes photographs taken with light from the scene itself, rather than a camera flash light, can often look more atmospheric and inviting.
• Show the whole thing - include at least one photograph that shows the whole of your holiday property from the outside
• No people – holiday makers do not want to see strangers in their future holiday venue. They want to imagine themselves going into an empty property all tidy and ready for them.
• Views – include attractive views of the landscape surrounding your holiday property.
• Tidy up – make sure your interior shots look tidy and uncluttered
• Be inviting – make the scene inviting with some personal touches, such as a lit fire, a vase of flowers, cushions or candles.
• Best angle – re-arrange the furniture to make the most of the shot and try to find an angle that makes the room look spacious. It sometimes helps to stand on something to give you extra height, so that you can take the photograph looking down over the whole room.

How do I count bathrooms in my property advert?

A washroom with a bath or shower = 1 bathroom

A washroom with just a toilet and a sink = 0.5 bathroom

Friendly URLs

What Are Friendly URLs?

• A URL is the web address of a webpage e.g. www.shortbreaks.com/faq.
• It is often the case that the web address of a particular webpage automatically ends up being a long, ugly and, to the ordinary user, meaningless, string of numbers, letters and characters: e.g. http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bbc&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari URLs like these are almost impossible to remember and tedious to copy out.To solve this problem, it is possible to override such addresses and provide what are known as 'friendly URLs'. Friendly URLs are shorter and made from meaningful words: e.g. www.shortbreaks.com/property/meadowcottage

Why have a Friendly URL?

• Friendly URLs, are easy to remember and pass on, look better in printed publications and provide memorable links on websites.

How to get your Friendly URL

• At no extra cost, Shortbreaks.com allows its holiday property owners to select a 'friendly URL' by using the Friendly URL option when editing your property details.
• Shortbreaks.com Friendly URLs can be 2 -50 characters in length. (counting from AFTER www.shortbreaks.com/property/)