HouseTrip Blog – Holiday apartment news, travel and rental tips

Homepage

This has been redesigned in order to emphasise the strengths of HouseTrip.com as a platform. First, our top destinations have been listed across the top of the page, to make it easier for guests to see the cities in which we have a good range of properties. These are the cities where we currently have the most holiday apartments. They will be constantly updated to reflect our current strongest offering. Second, we have identified some of the benefits of HouseTrip as a safe and easy platform for guests to rent holiday apartments and houses on a short-term basis. These are featured in the rotating slides displaying on the left of the page. We have also included a cool animated video for guests, and some of the industry testimonials that we have gathered recently at the bottom of the page. The design makes it more obvious at first glance what the HouseTrip platform represents.

Search results

Check out this search result for holiday apartments in London. The search results have been redesigned to display the information required in a search results page in a much clearer way. There are now more results displayed per page, with more space for each listing and a bigger thumbnail photo. The first lines of the description are translated. We have included a customer service sidebar with our office hours, which means we are now receiving many more phone calls from hosts and guests (we’ve received a lot of very useful feedback, which is great!). We’ve also included credit card symbols and a security padlock, to show that guests can make secure, encrypted payments for their bookings on HouseTrip.

Property Profile Page

Look at one of our holiday apartments in Paris. This has been redesigned to display the information about the holiday apartment in a much clearer and more visually pleasing way. The “Description”, “Summary” and “Top Amenities” sub-sections at the top of the page offer a taste of the property and offer easy navigation to the different sections of the page. The photos are bigger and it is easier to see the different photos. Sections are more clearly separated and we now offer optional translations of all text areas, thanks to Google Translate.

Booking Process

Guests can see the calendar of this Berlin holiday apartment’s availability on the “Calendar” tab. Then, if they wish, they can attempt to book directly. But we currently recommend that it is best to check availability with the owner first, on the “Booking Enquiry” tab. Here, guests enter the dates of their stay, which creates a predefined message to the owner, which guests can edit if they wish. Guests can send as many availability requests as they wish, which makes it a quick way to check the availability of multiple properties.

Once guests have an availability confirmed by an owner, they can book safely through the website, entering their credit card details during the process. Once the owner accepts the booking within 36 hours (normally, having already confirmed availability, the host accepts the booking extremely quickly), the guest’s card is charged. The money is held securely in escrow by an independent third party, which protects the guest’s money in case anything goes wrong.

N.B. New Messaging System Update!

Great news – we’ve improved our proprietary messaging system again. The message from guests to owners now includes number of guests and price as well as dates. Hosts then have six options:

• confirm that the dates are available for that properrty and that the price is correct for that number of guests
• propose a new price for the proposed stay
• propose different dates for the stay, if the property is available for similar dates but not the exact ones
• propose a different property, which is available for the proposed stay
• confirm that they cannot accommodate the guest for the proposed stay
• write a free text message

All of these options are customisable with a personalised message. The guest can book the offer directly and pay through the website. Since we launched this system a few days ago, we have seen that it is very popular with hosts and guests, since it offers the flexibility of a classified listing website but with the safe payment solution that attracts so many users to HouseTrip.