Describing Amenities So a Filter Finds Them

Guests filter before they read. An amenity described beautifully in prose and left unticked in the list is an amenity that doesn't exist for search.

Last updated: October 25, 2026

Your listing holds the same amenity twice: once as a field you tick, once as a sentence you write. The filter reads the field. The guest reads the sentence only after the filter has already let them through, which means an unticked amenity is invisible no matter how well you described it.

Key Takeaways

• The tick does the work. Filters read fields, not paragraphs. A washing machine in your prose and absent from the list is invisible.
• Group amenities by the decision they support. Access, climate, work, cooking, sleeping, parking — the order a guest actually applies them in.
• Qualify inside the field. Private or shared, in the unit or in the building. A qualifier in the description is one the filter never sees.
• Write for translation. Plain words beat local ones. "Fully equipped" tells a guest nothing they can check.
• Re-check quarterly, and after every change. A lift out of service for a month is an amenity change, not a maintenance note.

Ticked beats described

Every listing has two texts and most hosts only write one of them.

The first is the field: a named amenity with a tick beside it, which the platform can search, filter and count. The second is the description, where you can write anything you like and nothing in it is searchable. Guests use the first to narrow a hundred listings to five. They read the second when they're trying to tell those five apart.

That asymmetry has a cost. Write "there's a washer in the hallway cupboard" in your description and leave the washing machine unticked, and the guest who filtered for a washer never sees your unit. Your sentence was true, well written and completely invisible — the filter had already removed you from the results before anyone got to read it.

Ticking carries an obligation, which is why hosts hesitate. A ticked amenity is a promise; if it's ticked and broken, you get a complaint and a request for compensation. An unticked amenity promises nothing — and earns nothing. The way out isn't to leave things unticked. It's to tick what's true, and use the field's own qualifiers, or the first line of the description, to say exactly what "true" means here.

The rule I'd give a new host: tick the amenity if the guest could use it during a normal stay, and qualify it if a reasonable guest might expect something different.

Two hosts can run the same flat and score differently here purely because one treats the field as paperwork and the other treats it as the first paragraph of the listing.

The amenities guests filter on

Platforms publish different filter sets, and the sets change, so copying a full list is a losing game. What doesn't change is the order guests apply them in.

Can I get in and move around. Step-free access, a lift, a ground-floor unit, a door wide enough for a case. This filter runs first because it removes units outright.

Will I be comfortable. Air conditioning, heating, fans, blackout curtains. Guests travelling from a different climate filter here before they look at anything else.

Can I work. Wifi, a desk, a chair. A guest on a two-week stay will filter for a desk and then read your description to find out whether the desk is a table with a laptop on it.

Can I cook. A kitchen, a hob, an oven, a fridge, a dishwasher. This matters more for long stays and family trips, and it's where the local-versus-plain wording problem shows up worst.

Who sleeps where. Bed count and bed types, a sofa bed, a cot, a high chair. Groups filter here and then message you to confirm, so the field saves you both a round trip.

Can I park and arrive. Parking on site, parking nearby, a charge point, a late arrival window. Parking is the amenity guests ask about most after they've booked, which means the field is doing the pre-booking work badly if it's missing.

LOCALSBNB connects Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda and Trip.com to one calendar, and keeps each unit's record in one place rather than four. When you change an amenity — a new dryer, a lift under repair — you're changing it in a record you can see against the channels, not in a memory of which platform you updated last. localsbnb.com

Wording that survives translation

Most guests reading your listing aren't reading it in the language you wrote it in. Either the platform translates it or they do, and both processes flatten anything specific into something generic.

Four rules handle most of it.

Use the plain word, keep the local word as a bracket. A hob is a stove. A geyser is a water heater. Write the plain term and let the local one sit beside it, so the guest who knows the country and the guest who doesn't both land on the same object.

Say private or shared, every time. A pool, a garden, a terrace and a bathroom all need the qualifier. "Pool" on its own invites the guest to assume private, and the complaint that follows is about the assumption, not the water.

Say where it is. In the unit, in the building, on the street, two doors down. "Gym" means a different thing on each of those lines, and a filter can't tell them apart.

Replace praise with inventory. "Fully equipped kitchen" is a claim no guest can check. "Four-burner hob, oven, full-size fridge, no microwave" is a claim they can. The second one also saves you the message asking whether there's a microwave.

One more: names. Keep a brand name only when the brand is the amenity, such as an espresso machine a guest would recognise. Otherwise the brand adds a word that translation will mangle and search won't match.

A quarterly pass over the list

The list drifts because the unit changes and the listing doesn't.

Book your own unit for a night in your head, for your own family, and walk the filter list as that guest. Tick by tick. You'll find two kinds of error: things you have and never ticked, and things you ticked years ago and no longer have. The second kind is the expensive one.

Then check the seasonal items before the season, not during it. Air conditioning in late spring, heating in early autumn, pool heat before the first warm week, fans before the first hot one. An amenity that only exists for part of the year needs both a tick and a stated window, or it becomes a complaint in the off months.

Log a change the moment it happens. A lift out of service. A broken dryer waiting for a part. A parking space lost to building works. Each is an amenity change even when it's temporary, and each is cheap to write down at the time and expensive to reconstruct later.

Keep the dated note. When a guest says the listing promised something the unit doesn't have, a line with a date on it turns an argument into a fix.

A pass that finds nothing is still worth writing down. A list checked and found correct on a given date is a record too, and it's the one a complaint can't move.

FAQ

Should I tick an amenity that's shared with other units?

Yes, with the qualifier. A shared pool that's ticked and labelled "shared, open 9 to 8" is more useful to a guest than an unticked pool described in a paragraph. What you can't do is tick it and stay silent about the sharing.

What if the amenity only works in some months?

Tick it and state the window in the same breath. Pool heat from May, air conditioning in the bedrooms, heating from October — the guest filtering in February needs to know which side of the window they're on.

Does the description help at all if the field is empty?

For the guest who already found you, yes. For the guest still filtering, no. The description is where you qualify and explain; the field is where you get found.

The list is a small piece of work that keeps paying, because it's the only part of your listing a filter can read. Everything you change on it is visible against the connected channels, in one place, at localsbnb.com.

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This article is general guidance for hosts and isn't legal, tax or insurance advice. Amenity definitions, filter sets and the fields each platform offers differ by channel and change without notice. Confirm the current requirements and categories of each platform you publish on before you rely on a tick.