listing-copy

---
name: listing-copy
description: Turns your property, your photos and your house rules into listing copy that gets booked, with every claim tied to something you can evidence. Use when writing or rewriting a short-let, holiday home or serviced apartment listing for Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo or your own site.
---

# Write the listing that gets booked, and that you can still deliver in February

You give this a tour of the property in phone photos, the wifi speed off your phone, your house rules, your check-in and checkout times, the last six months of guest questions and anything a guest has ever complained about. You get back a title, a first paragraph, a full description in three lengths for three platforms, a plain "what this place is not" section, and a claims register that says where every factual sentence came from. Nothing goes in that you cannot prove on a wet Tuesday in February.

## What it does

1. **Build the fact sheet before you write a single sentence of copy.** Measure and write down: exact number the property sleeps and in what beds (a 4ft small double is not a double, a sofa bed is not a bedroom), number of bathrooms and whether any is a shower room or an en suite off a bedroom, floor level and the number of stairs to the front door and inside, parking (on drive, on street, permit, none) and the walking distance from the nearest parking to the door, wifi download and upload speed measured on a speed test at the kitchen table with the date, heating type, whether there is a working log burner and who supplies the logs, pets, cots, high chairs, EV charging, and the walking time in minutes to the nearest shop, pub, beach or station measured on a map rather than remembered. This is the whole of the work. The copy is the easy half.

2. **Require evidence for every factual claim, and record it.** The CMA's guidance on unfair commercial practices under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 states plainly that "Any factual claims made by a trader about a product should be supported by evidence. If a trader is not able to produce such evidence, the CMA or the courts may find the claim to be false on this basis." So each claim gets a row: the claim, the evidence, the date it was checked, the person who checked it. "Fast wifi" becomes a speed test with a date. "Two minutes from the beach" becomes a walking route with a distance. "Sea view" becomes a photograph taken from the window in question, in winter, with the trees bare and the curtains open. Any claim with no row does not go in the listing.

3. **Write a title of eight words or fewer that names the one thing nobody else has.** Type: property type, the distinguishing feature, the location the guest actually searched for. "Two-bed cottage, log fire, five minutes to Whitby harbour" does more work than "Charming coastal retreat". Paste the finished title into the platform's own title box and look at where it truncates on a phone before you accept it, because the platforms cut titles at different lengths and the cut is where your best word goes to die. Never put the word "luxury" in a title you have not had independently rated.

4. **Put the deal-breakers in the first three lines, not the last paragraph.** A guest reading on a phone sees roughly the first three lines before the "read more" fold. Those lines carry: who it suits and how many, the single best feature, and the one fact that most often cancels a booking later (stairs, no parking, no lift, pets, road noise). Burying it costs you the cancellation, the argument and the review. The CMA treats withheld basics as a legal problem, not just a service one: material information is "information that the average consumer needs to take an informed transactional decision", and omitting it includes "giving it in a way that is unclear, untimely or such that the consumer is unlikely to see it".

5. **Delete every adjective that cannot be photographed, measured or dated.** Strike "stunning", "breathtaking", "nestled", "oasis", "home from home", "modern", "spacious", "boutique". Replace each with the number that made you want to write the adjective. "Spacious" becomes "23ft open-plan kitchen and sitting room". "Stunning views" becomes "the sitting room window faces the estuary; the photo below was taken in January". Guests price the number and forgive it. They do not forgive the adjective when they arrive.

6. **Write a "what this place is not" section of 60 to 100 words and leave it in.** Name the stairs, the single glazing, the bus route at the end of the garden, the bathroom you reach through a bedroom, the hill from the car park, the mobile signal that only works by the window, the neighbour's cockerel. This paragraph will lose you a handful of bookings a year and it is the cheapest insurance you can buy, because every one of those bookings would have arrived, been disappointed and written it up in public. It also keeps you on the right side of step 4.

7. **Show the total price, not the headline rate, wherever your own site or your own wording controls the number.** The CMA's price transparency guidance says "The total price should normally include any unavoidable or 'mandatory' charges" and that it is "illegal to hide additional fees, taxes or other charges that the customer will have to pay until later in the purchase process". So a compulsory cleaning fee, a compulsory linen charge, a booking fee or a non-optional pet charge belongs in the price the guest first sees. Where the total genuinely cannot be worked out in advance, the guidance says you must "give the customer the information they need to be able to calculate the total price themselves" and that this information "must be as prominent as the part of the price that you can calculate". Penalties for getting it wrong run to "up to 10% of your turnover, or £300,000, whichever is greater".

8. **Strip out every scarcity and popularity line you cannot substantiate.** The CMA's principles for accommodation booking sites say "don't use false or misleading messages about popularity and availability" and, on discounts, "don't present something as a discount, by using 'strikethrough' prices or savings claims, unless the offer gives a real saving on a 'like for like' basis". The advertising rules point the same way: CAP rule 3.27 requires marketers to "make a reasonable estimate of demand for advertised products", and the ASA upheld a complaint against Eurostar International Ltd on 18 July 2018 over an ad saying "2 tickets left at this price" where "seats for the same journey were subsequently on sale for cheaper than the advertised price". If your own site says "only one week left in August", it has to be true when it says it.

9. **Write the safety and access facts as facts, in their own block.** Number of steps, handrail or not, door widths if you know them, whether the escape route from the bedrooms is through the kitchen, the presence of interlinked smoke alarms and a carbon monoxide alarm, whether there is a stairgate, whether the hot tub has a lockable cover. The GOV.UK fire safety guide for small paying-guest accommodation expects guests to be given "information on fire safety and the action to take in the event of a fire" and "the escape route and location of exit doors" in the information pack. Putting the honest version in the listing means the guest who cannot manage stairs books somewhere else, which is the outcome you want.

10. **Produce four files and hand them over together.** One: the listing in three lengths, a short version for the platforms that truncate hard, a medium one, and a long one for your own site, all from the same fact sheet so they cannot drift apart. Two: the fact sheet itself. Three: the claims register from step 2. Four: a short list headed "claims I removed and why", so that in six months, when someone asks why the listing does not say "sea view", the answer is already written down.

## Then it checks

1. Every factual sentence in the finished copy appears in the claims register with a named piece of evidence and a date, and no sentence claims a feature the register does not cover.
2. The first three lines contain the sleeps number, the single best feature, and the most common deal-breaker, and none of the three has been pushed below the fold on a phone-width preview.
3. The words stunning, breathtaking, nestled, oasis, idyllic, luxury, boutique and home-from-home appear zero times.
4. Every price shown includes every charge the guest cannot avoid, or states in equally prominent wording exactly how the guest works the total out.
5. The "what this place is not" section exists, runs to between 60 and 100 words, and names at least three specific things rather than three softened ones.
6. Every scarcity, popularity, discount or "from" claim either names the evidence behind it or has been deleted, and no strikethrough price survives without a like-for-like comparison written beside it.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never write a feature into the copy because a competitor's listing has it. Copy taken from another listing is a claim about your property that nobody has ever checked, and it is the single most common way a false claim gets into a listing.
- Never soften a defect into an amenity. "Cosy" for small, "characterful" for cold and "a short stroll" for twenty minutes uphill all read as deception when the guest is standing there, and they are the exact shape of claim the CMA describes as information which, although true, is presented in a misleading way.
- Never publish a photograph that shows something the guest will not get. A staged fruit bowl, a lit fire with logs you do not supply, or a hot tub that is drained from October to March each create a claim, whatever the text says.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's accountant, solicitor or trading standards adviser to check before it is published. It reads your own facts back to you and applies published guidance; it is not legal advice on whether any particular wording complies with consumer law.

## Built from
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Unfair commercial practices: CMA207", https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/691b9bd821ef5aaa6543ee6f/Unfair_commercial_practices_CMA207_18_Nov_2025__2_.pdf, 18 November 2025, read 14 September 2026: the evidence requirement behind every factual claim (step 2) and the definition of material information and of unclear or untimely disclosure (step 4).
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Being transparent with your customers: a short guide for online accommodation booking sites", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-hotel-booking-principles-for-businesses/being-transparent-with-your-customers-a-short-guide-for-online-accommodation-booking-sites, published 26 February 2019, read 14 September 2026: the popularity, availability and strikethrough-discount lines in step 8.
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Providing clear and accurate information about prices: summary", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/price-transparency-cma209/providing-clear-and-accurate-information-about-prices-summary, updated 7 January 2026, read 14 September 2026: the total-price rule, the partitioned-pricing fallback and the penalty figure in step 7.
- Committee of Advertising Practice, "Travel marketing: Availability", https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/travel-marketing-availability.html, page dated 28 January 2026, read 14 September 2026: CAP rule 3.27 and the Eurostar ruling that shaped step 8.
- Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, "Making your small paying guest accommodation safe from fire (accessible)", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-your-small-paying-guest-accommodation-safe-from-fire/making-your-small-paying-guest-accommodation-safe-from-fire-accessible, updated 20 January 2025, read 14 September 2026: the arrival information and escape route expectations that set the content of the safety block in step 9.
- GOV.UK, "Letting out a self-catering holiday home in England: rules and regulations", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/letting-out-a-self-catering-holiday-home-in-england-rules-and-regulations, published 25 March 2026 and updated 15 May 2026, read 14 September 2026: the list of obligations that a listing claim can quietly create, which is why step 2 requires evidence rather than memory.

# listing-copy

## You are given

A folder for one UK short let containing: phone photographs of every room and of the approach to the door, a measurements note (room sizes, bed types and widths, bathroom count and type, floor level, number of steps outside and in, door widths where known), a speed test screenshot or reading with the date and the place in the house it was taken, a parking note with the exact wording from any restriction sign, walking times to the shop, pub, beach or station taken from a map, the house rules, the current published listing if one exists, the charges the guest pays including any compulsory cleaning, linen, booking or pet fee, and a file of guest questions and complaints. Nothing is normalised and some claims in the current listing have no evidence anywhere in the folder.

## Produce

Write these files into `./listing-copy-output/`:

1. `fact-sheet.csv` - columns exactly: `fact_id,category,fact,value,unit,evidence_file,evidence_type,date_checked,checked_by,confidence`. `confidence` is `measured`, `supplied` or `missing`. One row for each of: sleeps number, beds by type and width, bedrooms, bathrooms and type, floor level, steps outside, steps inside, handrail, parking type, parking restriction wording, walking distance parking to door, wifi download speed, wifi upload speed, heating type, log burner and who supplies logs, pets, cots, high chairs, EV charging, walking time to shop, pub, beach and station, mobile signal, glazing, road noise.
2. `claims-register.csv` - columns exactly: `claim_id,claim_as_written,fact_id,evidence_file,evidence_type,date_checked,checked_by,verdict`. `verdict` is `EVIDENCED`, `NO_EVIDENCE` or `CONTRADICTED`. One row per factual sentence in every drafted version.
3. `listing-short.md`, `listing-medium.md` and `listing-long.md` - three lengths built from the same fact sheet, each carrying a `What this place is not` section of 60 to 100 words naming at least three specific things.
4. `first-three-lines.csv` - columns exactly: `version,line_1,line_2,line_3,sleeps_number_present,best_feature_present,deal_breaker_present,characters_before_fold`.
5. `total-price.csv` - columns exactly: `stay_length_nights,charge_line,amount_gbp,mandatory,included_in_headline,source_file`. Two blocks, two nights and seven nights, each ending in a `TOTAL` row. Every row where `mandatory` is `yes` must have `included_in_headline` set to `yes`.
6. `adjective-scan.csv` - columns exactly: `banned_word,occurrences,file,line_number`. One row per occurrence of: stunning, breathtaking, nestled, oasis, idyllic, luxury, boutique, home from home, modern, spacious, charming, retreat, cosy, characterful, a short stroll.
7. `claims-removed.csv` - columns exactly: `claim_as_written,where_it_came_from,reason_removed,what_would_evidence_it`.
8. `photo-claims.csv` - columns exactly: `claim,photo_file,photo_date_taken,season_or_conditions,verdict`. `verdict` is `EVIDENCED`, `NO_PHOTO` or `PHOTO_CONTRADICTS`.
9. `word-counts.csv` - columns exactly: `version,title_words,title_characters,body_words,not_section_words`.
10. `exceptions.csv` - columns exactly: `fact_id_or_claim_id,problem,what_it_blocks,source_file`.

## Rules

- Write files only. Never publish, upload, submit or paste copy into Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, a channel manager, a website or any other platform, and never open a platform API. The owner publishes it.
- Every factual sentence in every version must have a row in `claims-register.csv` with a named evidence file and a date checked. A sentence with `verdict` set to `NO_EVIDENCE` or `CONTRADICTED` is deleted from the copy and moved to `claims-removed.csv`. Never fill a gap with a plausible figure.
- Never invent or round a measurement, a speed, a walking time, a distance or a bed size. A missing one is written `missing` in `fact-sheet.csv` and named in `exceptions.csv`, and the copy says nothing about it.
- Never copy a sentence, a phrase or a feature from a competitor's listing supplied as a comparison. A claim taken from another property is a claim about that property.
- Never write a guest name, a review quote that names a guest, a booking reference, a contact detail or anything else drawn from a booking or a message thread into any listing version, the fact sheet or the claims register. Guest material is used to find what needs answering, never reproduced.
- Every price shown must include every charge the guest cannot avoid, or state in equally prominent wording how the guest works the total out. Compute both totals in `total-price.csv` from the supplied charges and never from a headline nightly rate alone.
- `adjective-scan.csv` must end with zero occurrences in the shipped versions. Replace each with the number that prompted it, taken from `fact-sheet.csv`.
- Never write a scarcity, popularity, strikethrough or discount claim. If one appears in the current listing, move it to `claims-removed.csv` with the reason.
- Never soften a defect into an amenity and never omit one. The stairs, the glazing, the road, the hill, the signal and the shared entrance go in `What this place is not`, named plainly.
- Never describe a photograph as evidence of a claim unless the file exists and its date-taken is readable. Record the season or conditions, since a summer photograph does not evidence a February view.
- British English. £ with pence. Dates DD Month YYYY. No em dash characters. No emoji. CSVs UTF-8, header row, comma separated, fields containing commas quoted.

## Return

The file paths written, the fact count by confidence level, the claim count by verdict, the row count in `claims-removed.csv`, the two-night and seven-night totals, the occurrence count in `adjective-scan.csv` for the shipped versions, the word count of each version and of each `What this place is not` section, and every fact marked `missing`. State that nothing has been published, and that the copy is a working document for the owner's accountant, solicitor or trading standards adviser to check before it goes live.