Create a successful advert

Educate yourself before you rent out your holiday home - it pays off

Spain-holiday.com is running since 2002. We have over the years built up a knowledge base which we would like to share with homeowners to help them improve their rental income. Most exercises are surprisingly simple, but the effect can be very powerful.
Look through our homeowners FAQ guide here and be inspired to build an ad for your holiday rental business that works.

  1. You create an account here
  2. When you have received an email with your password, enter the password along with your email address on the login screen
  3. Set up the 2-step verification using your mobile phone by following the steps on the screen
  4. Log in to your account and set up a profile with your personal details
  5. Click on "New Advert" and follow the simple steps on the page
  6. When your advert is created, you will be required to provide documents of ownership
  7. Setup your bookings in the availability calendar
  8. Pay for your advert via "Pay" in the menu area of your account

Consider the fact that for a potential guest, you are a stranger that they are entrusting with not only their money but their holiday. So even before any contact is established, be aware that any potential guests are booking their family holidays without a safety net. With that in mind, it’s very important that your advert reflects trust, using the following tips:

Information that should be included in your advert:
  • Include the full name of a relevant contact - this can be your name or your company’s name, we don’t recommend the use of nicknames
  • Add a profile picture, you can either upload one of your choice or link your personal account to your Facebook profile
  • Include a phone number. We advise guests to call the owners to confirm bank account details
  • Include and maintain an up-to-date booking calendar so guests can see that others have booked your holiday home and when
Once contact has been established:
  • Send a formal booking agreement including all travel, payment and contact information. You could consider using our standard rental agreement
  • Respond to emails in a timely manner - otherwise guests may change their minds or book another holiday home
  • Remember - correct and informative communication will build up the guests trust in you and your holiday home

Logging into your user account involves two steps. The first step is entering your email and password. If you have forgotten your password, you can get a new one which we will send via email. Please note that after five wrong password attempts, your account will be blocked for 20 minutes. Each account can only have one registered email address, so it is also not possible to have two accounts with the same login email. The second step is providing a code which is sent via SMS to your phone. This is only required when 60 days have passed since the last time you logged in and provided a code or when you logged in from a different device. Read more about it here:

http://www.spain-holiday.com/rentalbuzz/extra-security-for-owners-login-2-step-verification

For problems with login, you may contact support from your registered phone and we will assist you.

Great photos are your key tools. We want to emphasize the importance of ensuring your photos are of the best quality, as they basically rent out your holiday home for you. We advise you to ensure you have done the following:

  • Take your photographs on a sunny day with blue skies
  • Morning and afternoon sun gives your photographs the best light
  • Make sure to keep the sun behind you when you take your photographs
  • On your advert, the best photo should be the first one as this is used as a thumbnail photo in the listings and is the first thing that potential guests see
  • When taking indoor photos, we recommend using flash and opening the curtains
  • Show photos from indoor, outdoor and the surroundings like pool, garden, beach, etc
  • If you want to take a step up - contact a professional photographer

All descriptions and notes must be written in English (as our default language). In addition, you can also write in any of the other available languages. There is no limit regarding the length of the description. You can write as much or as little as you like about your holiday home and area. We do ask that you write descriptions yourself and not copy from another holiday home advert on www.spain-holiday.com.

In general it is a good idea to not only highlight the positive features of your holiday home, but also the facilities in the local area. Write an informative description, not too long, not too short. People need to be informed but don’t want to be bored.

It is important to make an attractive advert that people just can't miss. We offer various tools in your account, that may prove important to your rental business. Here is a quick guide to some of the most important tools:

  • PHOTOS - Your best card, so make sure to study
  • TRANSLATE YOUR ADVERT - Our system offers the possibility for you to write your advert in many languages. Log into your account and write up your advert in any languages you choose, this will boost visibility of your advert in the search engines for more countries and open doors to more potential guests. Guests often feel more comfortable if they rent from a person who speaks their language
  • CALENDAR - The availability calendar must be used and updated. Guests prefer to contact homeowners with adverts which display an updated calendar as it gives a sense of reliability and guests feel one step closer to securing a holiday home. We sometimes receive complaints from potential guests saying that a time period appears available in the calendar and when actually it isn’t, so we have put into place a new system that stops your advert from being displayed from the specific date search if the calendar is not updated. A time period is shown as booked when the reservation fee has been paid, so make sure to update it at this time. There are API’s available to synchronize your calendar on your private website or any other holiday rental portal (using iCal) with the advert on Spain-Holiday
  • LAST MINUTE - If your holiday home has availability in the near future, you may set up a free last minute offer to increase your chances of getting it booked for that period, this can be found in the “Prices” section
  • REPLY FAST - If you reply quickly to your enquiries, you increase your chances of being the first to get the booking. You can use our templates and auto-response tools to help you with this
  • STRUCTURE YOUR BUSINESS - If a guest feels that your communication is correct, fast and informative and that you have provided information and assistance where possible, they are more likely to trust you and book your holiday home
  • PERFORMANCE - Here you can get an idea of how your advert is doing compared to previous years and you can follow how many hits and clicks it receives, as well as more tools
  • WIDGETS - If you have your own private website you can use our widgets to add on your site. We offer widgets for calendar, image slideshow, prices and reviews
  • REVIEWS - Take good care of your holiday home and guests, in order to receive nice reviews

No, this is not possible. Each advert is for one holiday home with a specific ID, therefore, this ID is unique to this holiday home only and cannot be transferred to another property. Furthermore, each holiday home has a fixed licence which also corresponds with this unique ID number. Finally, in order to uphold the best guest experience, we cannot transfer an advert to a different holiday home as the reviews for the previous advert would not be truthful and if a guest has already booked the holiday home it would appear that is no longer available. In the case that a holiday home is no longer available or you need to cancel the advert for any reason, please inform the support team. They will take the advert offline. Please bear in mind that you will not be refunded any money in these circumstances.

We do not require you to use a booking form. We do however recommend that you to write up a formal agreement between you and the guest to avoid any misunderstandings; to build up a sense of trust and to specify your cancellation policy. This can be done via a standard e-mail or word/pdf file in English. We recommend that you use our standard booking form that includes the most common information which is useful for you and the guest.

For additional information on what you might want to include in your personal booking form, please take a look at this article.

  • Log in frequently to your user account and find all the enquiries we have sent you under “secure inbox”
  • You can activate the SMS service which will alert you each time you receive a new enquiry
  • Check your “spam” email box as sometimes good emails can land in there

Initially you must create the advert in your user account. However if you have doubts or technical issues doing this, our friendly support team is always here to give you effective support and to guide you through the process. Since you know your holiday home and local area best, you will be the best person to create your advert.

It will take 0-3 business days for your advert to appear online. Once it is ready, has been approved by our staff (via proof of ownership documents) and your payment has been received your advert will go online. At any time, you can login and make changes to your advert, however you cannot change the holiday home. Each advert is for one home and that cannot be modified. The invoice is created at the same time as receiving your payment and is available in your user account to download or to print out. Therefore, make sure that before paying, your personal details are correctly added to your account profile, as we don’t modify the invoices once these have been created.

We have 3 types of subscription listings: Basic, Plus and Premium.

Premium adverts are always positioned highest in province, coast, town/city and suburb.

Plus adverts are positioned highest below premium adverts according to town/city and suburb.

Basic adverts are positioned below premium and plus adverts. To ensure maximum visibility and best performance for each advert we use a Quality Score System and the more information you add to your holiday home advert, the better your score. Holiday homes are rotated on a daily basis.

We have divided the page into different sections so visitors have several ways to locate your advert. They can search via area, ID, map, theme, popular destinations or advanced search on all languages. Furthermore your advert will, in time, become picked up by search engines including Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others which perform daily searches across all our sites.

Fraud happens and we all need to be alert. We closely monitor all enquiries and potential guests and if we find something suspicious about an enquiry we sent to you, we will notify you. You should be cautious about the following:

  • If the guest is from Nigeria, Sudan, The Ivory Coast or any other country from Central Africa
  • If the story sounds too fantastic - "My government have sent me on an official assignment", "I work for a Christian organisation" or "I would like to pay the full amount up front"
  • If the written English is very poor, but very formal.
  • You receive a cheque with a larger amount than you asked for.
  • If the guest wishes to pay you via "Western Union" or similar company which is not a bank
  • Read more about fraud and phishing on RentalBuzz: http://www.spain-holiday.com/rentalbuzz/c/owners-board/fraud

This service is currently not available, we will update this page when it is available again with instructions on how to proceed

You can read all about how our reviews system works here: http://www.spain-holiday.com/rentalbuzz/reviews-how-it-works

Do you own a private website for your holiday home? If so, you can insert a smart link which will show your calendar from Spain-Holiday.com on your own website. If you update your calendar from your account on Spain-Holiday.com it is immediately and automatically updated as well on your website. If at some point you choose to no longer advertise on Spain-Holiday.com, you will still be able to maintain your free booking calendar. All you need to do is insert a small piece of HTML code which is available on the page where you manage your calendar.

We also offer widgets for the price table, reviews and the image slideshow.

To avoid your enquiries ending up in your spam or junk folder we have set up a few extra features to ensure the safe delivery of your enquiries. If you use a web based email client like Hotmail, BTInternet, Telefonica, Yahoo! or Gmail you should add support@spain-holiday.com, enquiries@spain-holiday.com and noreply@spain-holiday.com to your contact list or whitelist.

Frequently login to your user account on Spain-Holiday.com to ensure you have received all your enquiries and use our secure inbox to reply them.

We have a few conditions which you will be asked to accept once you create your advert on Spain-Holiday.com. If you wish to read the detailed version, you may do so here: read our terms and conditions to advertise.

If you have questions which were not answered above, kindly contact us. You can also try looking through RentalBuzzz where we cover topics from the holiday rentals industry and help you become a successful holiday rentals homeowner.