Room, photos, terms and offer on one page: an example for a guest house with five rooms

Example scenario. A guest house with five rooms in a small mountain town. The property, the rooms, the times and the terms are invented and serve only as an illustration. Adapt them to your own property.

Where the guest gets lost

Imagine a guest who liked a photo of the house on Facebook and opens the website. They click “Rooms” and see a list of five names. They open one of them and see three photos and two sentences. To find out whether they can bring a dog, they have to scroll to the bottom of the website. Breakfast has another page. And the offer for the autumn weekend is a banner on the home page that does not say which rooms it applies to.

This guest does not disagree with anything. They simply get tired by the fourth click and open the next property on the list. The owner never learns that they were there.

The idea in this article is simple: on the page of every room, the guest finds everything they need to decide, without leaving the page.

The property in the scenario

The house has five rooms: two doubles, one triple, one family apartment and one small room under the roof. The owner runs the website alone, usually in the evening. They take enquiries by phone and through a form. The main problem: people ask the same things, and some of them do not ask at all.

The order of a room page

Use the same order for all five rooms. That way a guest who has looked at the first one knows where to look in the second.

• A title and one clear phrase: how many people it is for, what bed it has, which floor it is on.
• Photos.
• What is in the room and what is not.
• Terms.
• An offer, if there is one for this room.
• Enquiry.

Photos

The rules in the scenario are four:

• The first photo is the whole room from the door, not a detail of a pillow.
• Next come the bed, the bathroom, the view from the window and, if there is one, the balcony.
• Every photo is of that same room, not of a “similar” one. A guest who gets a different room remembers it for a long time.
• Do not show a room that you cannot offer today in the state shown in the photo. If you have changed the furniture, photograph it again.

How to prepare photos and texts in detail is described in a separate article, and how to present rooms and offers as a whole is in the guide to rooms and offers (see the links below).

What there is and what there is not

A short list of real things. For example: air conditioning, television, balcony, bathroom with shower, kettle. And one or two things that the guest might assume but that are not there: a lift, parking in front of the entrance. Saying what is not there is not an admission of weakness, but a way to spare the two of you an unpleasant conversation at reception.

Terms

Most often the guest looks for a few things, and these are exactly what should be on the room page itself, not only under “Terms” at the bottom:

• check-in and check-out times;
• whether pets are allowed;
• breakfast: whether it is included or paid separately, and at what time;
• parking;
• how payment works and how a stay is cancelled.

Write only what you really apply. If the cancellation rules depend on the season, say so. For legal wording about contracts and taxes, check what applies to your property; do not copy it from someone else's website.

Offer

An offer makes sense when the guest sees which room it applies to, for what, until when and what it includes. For example: “Autumn weekend: two nights, breakfast, until the end of November”. Do not put up an offer that you cannot fulfil for all the stated dates. If the price is “from”, say what it depends on.

Enquiry

The form at the bottom of the room page is closest to the decision. Ask for the minimum: dates, number of guests, phone. Everything else can be clarified by phone. Also write one honest sentence: the enquiry is not a reservation and does not hold the room until you confirm it.

Maintenance rhythm

For five rooms maintenance is not heavy, but it has to be planned:

• at the start of the season: check the times, rules and prices of every room;
• once a month: review the photos and replace them if anything has changed;
• with every new offer: add it to the room page and remove it on the day it expires;
• after every enquiry: if you have answered a question that repeats, add the answer to the page.

The last one is the most valuable. Every question that guests ask more than twice is a sign that something is missing from the page.

Where ISKA Website helps

ISKA Website shows the rooms with photos and, optionally, a “from” price, the services, the gallery, the offers and an enquiry form. The website is maintained by the owner through ISKA: changes are a draft, you review them and publish them, and if needed you can go back to a previous version. An enquiry is not a reservation and does not hold a room. ISKA Website is offered by individual quote, with no standard price. What the order of each room page should be is your decision, not the tool's.

Check before publishing

• All five rooms follow the same order.
• The first photo is of the room itself and matches how it looks today.
• The terms are on the room page: check-in, pets, breakfast, parking, cancellation.
• The offer says which room it is for, what it includes and until when it is valid.
• The form asks only for dates, guests and phone, and says that it is not a reservation.
• You have reviewed the page on a phone, as the guest sees it.