FAQ for Hosts

1. Click the ’add a property’ button
2. Describe your property and upload pictures
3. Add your price and availability under the ‘My Properties’ tab of your host account page
4. Get your first HouseTrip bookings!

You can manage your bookings (and adjust availability, prices and property details) under the ‘My Properties’ tab of your host account page. You can also by clicking ’manage’ next to your property heading on your property listings page.

When you first log in to your account, you are taken to your Inbox where you can view, confirm or reject (as well as manage) your enquiries and requests for each of your properties.

Clicking the ‘My properties’ tab takes you to the area where you can manage and edit all of the properties you may have listed on HouseTrip.

Click the sub-tabs to do the following:

• Properties - Change the description and details of your property, add and remove photos of your properties.
• Calendar - Define the availability of your property
• Payment - Change your billing information
• Prices - Define your rates – i.e. how much you want to receive for each night’s stay at your property.

We pay you either by bank transfer or via your PayPal account. Your guests pay us at the time of booking and we transfer the money to you 48 business hours after the beginning of the guest’s stay.

This is the minimum number of nights you want guests to book for. We recommend you set the minimum length of stay to one night so as to accommodate the maximum number of guests.

Yes you can. Our site is open to private homes, property management companies and bed and breakfasts. If you have specific requests or policies related to your business, please contact us at sales@housetrip.com and we’ll happily discuss.

Yes. You can list a space – either an entire property or a private room – in any location worldwide.

After you host a guest, they will be asked to leave a review. The review will show up on your listing, and provide future guests with a validated testimonial about your property.

When you receive HouseTrip guests, encourage them to review their stay. To get your first bookings, we also suggest lowering your prices to generate your first few reviews.

You can upload as many photos as you wish. Just make sure you follow our guidelines about how to take the best pictures.

First enter your country from the dropdown menu, then enter the first letters of the city and select one destination from those that appear. We have more than 25 million locations in our database so the first step is to double-check that your address is correctly spelt is exact. Check Google Maps to make sure that it matches their spelling. If that doesn’t resolve the issue, please contact us at host@housetrip.com and we’ll look into it.

We have a fairly extensive list of amenities you can tick during the property description process – and you can add any extra ones of your own.

’On request’ means that you need to make an availability request with the host before booking (you can do this in one simple click on the property description page); ’Instant booking’ means the host’s calendar is always updated and you can therefore book directly.

If you wish to create an ’instant booking’ listing, please contact our team on host@housetrip.com.

If you’ve listed an ’on request’ property, you’ll get availability requests from potential guests who want to know about your property. You’ll be notified via email and on your HouseTrip account.

When you receive an enquiry, double-check that all the details of the booking work for you (dates, length of stay, rates etc). They should be fine since guests need to comply with the availability of your listing.

You can confirm or reject an enquiry, or you can propose another stay, for instance change the property or the dates, to make the enquiry match your availability.

Rejecting a request will automatically block out the dates in your calendar, but you can edit your answer in order to leave the date free or only block out a part of that time period.

Note that replying positively to requests boosts your success in the HouseTrip search results. Also note that if you’ve replied positively to a request but then reject the said guest’s booking, it will negatively influence the position of your property in the HouseTrip search results.

We encourage guests to make up to 4 or 5 requests for a single stay. This maximises their chances of getting a positive response. That’s why a guest may book elsewhere even if you respond positively.

To get round this issue, we suggest you respond to requests as promptly as possible.

Once you’ve responded positively to an availability enquiry, your guest is free to book your property. We’ll contact you via email and in your HouseTrip account to ask you to accept or deny the booking.

If you’re happy to go ahead, click to ’Accept’ the booking. The booking is automatically confirmed and you’ll receive an automated email from us with all the guest’s details (phone number, email address, name and address).

You have 36 hours before the booking expires. Make sure you always accept (or reject) bookings as letting a booking expire is just the worst experience you can give to a guest and is something we strongly discourage at HouseTrip.

This shouldn’t happen as the guest will only book if you’ve told him/her it’s available. Make sure you double-check dates and prices before accepting any availability requests, in order to not have to deny bookings later on.

Yes. This also applies if you need to offer alternative options, or reject a request. You may receive several messages from the same guest, but we still urge you to answer them all. It makes a better experience for your guests and your reply rate will be calculated appropriately.

Yes. Your property profile has a unique link. We strongly encourage you to share it wherever you can on the Internet as it drives more bookings for your property.

’Entire property’ is a house/apartment/studio that is rented in its entirety to the guest who books it. ’Private room’ is a room that may be in a shared property. Make sure you make it very clear what you are offering in your property description.

Once you create your first listing, you will have an account. Simply repeat the process you used to list your first property.

If you wish to un-publish your property you can do it directly under the ‘My Properties’ tab of you host account. Click to ‘change the description’ for the property – you’ll see a green ‘Published’ button above the property’s details where you can also change the status to ‘Unpublished’.

If you wish to delete your listing entirely, you need to contact our team on host@housetrip.com. You cannot un-publish or delete a property that still has upcoming bookings.

If you want to cancel a booking please contact our team, at host@housetrip.com and they will help you. We always ask the host to also contact the guest and explain the reasons for the cancellation.

Guests can cancel their booking at anytime, but always accordingly to the cancellation policy that you selected. According to these policies you’ll get a certain amount of money, even if the guest cancels. Your property will be available again and you might even get a new booking for these dates.

Go to ‘My properties’ tab on your host account and select the property you want to edit. On the photo gallery, select the preferred picture and click on ’make default’.

The first page displays the most responsive hosts and best reviewed properties. You can improve your rank by accepting more bookings and getting good reviews.

We require all messaging to be handled through the site to maintain your privacy, provide an appropriate level of service, and for any interactions to adhere to our terms & conditions to ensure you are protected. Once a booking is confirmed you will receive the guest’s details: their email address, phone number, name and address.

Yes you can. Just be careful not to have any two bookings for the same dates (i.e. double booking the property). A simple way to avoid this is to check your calendar under the My Properties tab in your account every time you have a booking request from another website in order to make sure you don’t already have a HouseTrip booking for the same dates.

We encourage all HouseTrip hosts to keep their calendar as up-to-date as possible. If your property is “Instant booking”, your calendar has to be constantly up-to-date.

Add professional quality photos, lower your price, and reply promptly to all enquiries. These are the 3 easiest ways to increase business.

The most important thing is having great quality photos and an accurate and complete description.

To ensure we provide quality information, all our listings need to be verified by our team before they can appear on the map. When you first list your property, it can take some days before the property is checked and appears on the map.

No. Accepting a booking is for that particular room or address. Swapping properties is not acceptable. Please contact us at support@housetrip.com if availability becomes an issue.

When you get a booking request, you can offer another apartment if the requested one is not available. But once you’ve accepted a booking for one specific apartment, you cannot move the guest to a new one.

Take note of the feedback, improve the experience, and host again. We encourage you to respond to the review in order to give your own explanations of the problem. This way future guests can see both views of the issue and acknowledge that you are a concerned and professional host.

If you think the review is slanderous or unfair, contact us and we’ll look into it.

There are 2 ways to access the details of a booking.

1. Simply go to the ‘My Properties’ tab in your account and select ‘Bookings’ to see a list of confirmed bookings sorted by check-in-date.
2. In your Inbox, select ‘Accepted Bookings’ on the left hand menu. Once you have opened the conversation for a particular booking there is a link to view the details of that particular booking.
   (N.b. If the booking was made more than 30 days previously, first select ‘Archived messages’ on the left hand menu to find the conversation.)

Go to your calendar under the My Properties tab. Dates highlighted in light green are availability periods. Simply click on any of those dates to see the settings for the corresponding period. To remove, modify or add availability, simply select the correct option from the dropdown, choose the dates to which this new status will apply and click ‘confirm’.

Go to the My Properties tab in your account, and click the ’change the description’ link next to the correct property. Then, click on any one of the ’edit’ buttons to modify the description.

We suggest you look at some similar HouseTrip listings in your city for guidance. If you’re a new host, we recommend you put your listing on sale by charging 25-50% less than the market rate to compete with hosts with lots of reviews.

This will add value and be a good long-term investment. Once you build a good reputation, demand will go up, and you can charge more.

We ask guests to pay us in order to offer an easy and secure payment system. We hold the payment amount securely and release it to you after the guest has been at the property for 48 business hours.

If there are booking problems or cancellations, it is easier and more secure for us to deal with refunds.

Hosts benefit too as we handle the whole payment process and transfer the money directly to your bank account, you don’t have anything to worry about or organise.

We send you the rental fee 2 business days after the guest checks in.

We pay you by bank transfer or via your Paypal account. You can change your billing details under the ‘Payment’ tab of ‘My properties’ in your account.

Your bank or Paypal may charge transactional fees, so we advise you to check this first in order to select the best payment option for you.

IBAN means International Bank Account Number and BIC (sometimes also called SWIFT) means Bank Identifier Code. You can find both numbers on your bank statements.

IBAN and BIC account details alone are not sufficient to debit, withdraw or transfer funds from a bank account; they are used solely to credit or transfer funds into bank accounts.

We take your trust incredibly seriously. We use appropriate physical, technical and administrative procedures to safeguard the information we collect. We also use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption when collecting or transferring sensitive information such as your billing details.

You can set additional fees in your property listings. These are fees that are not calculated in the total price paid by the guest via HouseTrip when they book and that you will have to arrange payment for yourself. Usually it would be a payment charged in cash upon arrival or at checkout.

These fees are final cleaning, security deposit and late checkout fee. Make sure you are clear about these fees during the booking process. Remember - additional fees may be an unappealing prospect to guests, which is why we typically recommend factoring them in your price per night.

We suggest you factor this fee into the price of your listing, rather than adding extra charges. If you prefer not to, then please do not forget to set it as an additional fee in your property profile and charge it directly to your guests at check-in or check-out.

Deposits are an offline arrangement that we don’t facilitate. You will need to carry out this separate arrangement with guests.

Make sure you specify that you will collect a deposit (as well as how much it is) in the description of your property, within the ’additional fees’ section.

We support €, £, $ and CHF.

The price you set when you originally created the property is the default rate for all dates in your calendar. The system is flexible so you can set the same price for long periods of time, or a different price every day. To make changes to your prices and to apply them to different dates in your calendar, follow these steps:

1. Go to your host account page, select the ‘My Properties’ tab and then the ‘Prices’ sub-tab.
2. Use the links to ‘add a new rate’ or ‘modify’ a current rate.
3. Follow the link to ‘Apply rates to dates on your calendar’.
4. Choose the property as necessary from the dropdown to show the calendar for that property.
5. Click on the start date for the period to which you want a rate to apply. Select ‘modify availability’ from the dropdown, enter the dates, choose the rate and click ‘Confirm’.

Hosts don’t pay anything to use HouseTrip. You define the price you want to receive from the property and we simply add our mark-up (typically between 10% and 20%) on top. Your guests pay the price you want to receive - plus our mark-up.

It’s up to you to ensure you comply with the laws and ordinances of your country, state or city. Typically, hosts need to pay sales tax and city tax (once you’ve checked, you may want to factor them into your price per night).

Good photos are a huge component of a good listing (see the next question if you need advice on this).

If your listing is comprehensive, it will generally be more appealing to guests, and they will be more likely to enquire about it. Other important components of a listing are:

• The property description: Make sure you sell your property - not your area. Describe your property in a way that encourages guests to imagine the great stay they will have there. Add any unique selling points, major amenities, info about the bedrooms and the beds, suitability for certain groups of guests and a description of the view.
• The title of the property: Use words that clearly depict your property and its main selling points. It could describe your property type, location type and major amenities (e.g. ’19th century flat in Paris city centre with panoramic view’).
• The location: Guests look for properties that are close to specific attractions. In the property’s text description, we recommend listing the exact distance from the property itself to specific attractions.
• The price: Most guests search with a certain budget in mind. Make sure you set up your nightly prices correctly in the ‘Prices’ tab under ‘My Properties’ section of your host account.
• Availability: Many guests base their holidays around work and school calendars, which can make their timing inflexible. Keep your availability calendar up-to-date to attract guests looking for specific dates, even at the last minute.

The more quality photos you provide, the more interested guests become – and then they’re more likely to book.

Here are a few tips to help you take the right shots:

• Stage your photos: Help guests imagine what it’s like to stay at your place. Stage your scene by making sure it’s clean and tidy, then add warm touches, such as a bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers.
• Shed some light: Open all blinds and curtains, turn on all indoor lights, and take photos both with and without flash.
• Necessary photos: The living area, the main bedroom, the view from the property, the outside of the property, the kitchen, the additional bedrooms, the swimming-pool (if there is one) or anything that makes your property unique and desirable.
• Keep it sharp: Use a tripod to avoid blurred photos.

• Be quick: Be the first to respond to enquiries from potential guests
• Be competitive: Be competitive with your prices – or reduce them initially if you need more bookings and reviews
• Update: Keep your listings updated, especially the calendar
• Reviews: Get positive reviews by being a fabulous host
• Optimise: Optimise your listing for search engines by being as specific as possible when writing your property description
• Link: Link to your property listing from other websites around the web (your blog, Facebook, Twitter etc).

Think about why guests want to stay in a rental property instead of a hotel. There’s more space, more amenities, more personality - and they get to experience life as a local.

• Sleeping areas: Provide nice beds with washable pillow and mattress protectors. Provide quality linen and extra bedding.
• Living area: Make sure your living area has enough comfortable seating for at least the number of people that you sleep.
• The bathrooms: Make sure bathrooms are spotless and that there are plenty of good quality towels.
• Decoration: Aim to decorate and furnish your property tastefully. You may want to consider adding a unique and/or local touch in order to stand out from the crowd.
• The kitchen: When it comes to kitchens, think practical. Don’t limit tableware to the amount of people you sleep – remember they may want to entertain guests. The more you offer, the more appealing your property will be.
• TV and Internet: Guests often expect high-speed Internet and a large TV with a DVD player.
• Extras: Aim to exceed expectations. Why not offer some games, books, DVDs or music – or a personal touch from the host, such as a package of bread, coffee and milk in the fridge on arrival.

Note: before welcoming guests, remember to remove or lock away any valuable or irreplaceable items.

If you can’t hand them over in person when your guests arrive, here are some other options:

• Personal touch: Ask someone else to hand them over on your behalf.
• Lock boxes: It’s easy to set your own code on a lock box and fix it next to your door with the keys inside. You can then provide your guests with the combination.
• Keyless door locks: If you use a keyless entry lock, you can email the code to guests and change it between guests.
• Mail keys: We don’t recommend this method as mail can get lost or arrive late. A lot of hosts however still use this solution. If you do, use a secure, recorded delivery service and make sure you keep the master keys.

If you have more questions or want to find out more about a specific property, you can always reach us at +351 213806120 or send an email to host@housetrip.com.