How do I get my holiday let or B&B in Wales recommended by AI?

Picture the question as a traveller types it: somewhere on Llŷn that sleeps six, takes two dogs, has a car charger and is near enough to the beach to walk there with a pushchair. Each part rules places out, and an answer can only put a property forward on what some page states. To that answer, a cottage whose site never mentions dogs might turn them away.

The facts behind such questions are few, and the same for a cottage, a B&B room, a static caravan or a glamping pod: probably the ones you already answer by email. The checklist below gathers them.

Vague words answer none of these questions. “Close to the beach” and “pet-friendly” leave open which beach, how close, which pets and how many. A page that says “twelve minutes’ walk to the beach, one dog welcome” gives a guest a reason to choose it instead.

A booking platform asks every host the same questions, one field at a time, and prints the answers as text. Airbnb’s help for hosts sorts amenities into categories such as parking and facilities, and says many guests filter their search results by amenities. The listing that results states the bedrooms, the dog rule and the parking in words anyone can quote.

Compare a site built to look good: a slideshow of the view, a warm welcome, a calendar loaded from another service, and the practical details in a PDF or only in the photographs. It looks better than the listing and says less. When only one of the two pages answers the question, that is the page a traveller and an assistant both go on.

Test it the way a guest would: describe your place to an assistant without naming it, in English and in Welsh, then ask about it by name, and open the links each answer gives. Where they lead to a listing, make your own page at least as complete, and in agreement with it: if the listing says the cottage sleeps five and your site says four, the two pages describe different cottages. Keep your Google Business Profile telling the same story.

Give each property one block near the top of its page that answers the practical questions in plain sentences or a short list, as text rather than in a picture.

An invented example: a cottage near Abersoch whose page opens with “Our beautiful cottage is the perfect base for exploring Llŷn.” That sentence answers nothing. This one answers a great deal: “Two bedrooms, a mile south of Abersoch, sleeping four in a double and a twin. One dog welcome, no charge. Parking for two cars and an electric car charger. Wi-Fi throughout; weak mobile signal. Twenty minutes’ walk to Abersoch beach, with the Wales Coast Path at the end of the lane. Three nights minimum, Saturday changeovers. Book direct below.”

Say what is missing as plainly as what is there: “no dogs”, “three steps to the front door, bedrooms upstairs”. For access, give what a guest needs to judge for themselves. Visit Wales asks businesses in its Approved scheme for an access statement or accessibility guide; if you have one, publish it as a page, not only as a download.

Then put the way to book direct on the same page: a form or a link, how the price is worked out, and an email address and phone number written as text.

If your site has a Welsh version, check that it carries the facts and not only the greeting. A family asking an assistant, in Welsh, for a cottage that takes dogs is asking about exactly those details.

An invented B&B in Betws-y-Coed shows how little it takes. The English page says: “Three en-suite rooms, five minutes’ walk from the station. One ground-floor room with a level entrance and a walk-in shower. Parking for three cars. Dogs welcome in the garden room.” The Welsh page says it as Welsh, not word for word: “Tair ystafell en-suite, bum munud ar droed o’r orsaf. Un ystafell ar y llawr gwaelod, gyda mynedfa wastad a chawod heb ris. Lle i barcio tri char. Croeso i gŵn yn ystafell yr ardd.”

Keep every number identical in both languages. Our guide to Welsh place names covers the standard spelling of the village, and the page on bilingual websites covers how the two versions of a page name each other.

Schema.org, the vocabulary behind structured data, has types for this sector. LodgingBusiness is the general one, a lodging business such as a hotel or an inn, with BedAndBreakfast and Campground among its kinds. VacationRental, its name for a holiday let, is a lodging business that rents out single properties for limited stays. Accommodation is the place itself: the room, the pitch or the cottage.

Accommodation takes numberOfBedrooms and occupancy, the number of people allowed. petsAllowed takes a yes or no, or text for the detail. amenityFeature names a feature such as parking or Wi-Fi, but schema.org notes that it does not say whether the feature costs extra, so say that on the page.

Google documents a VacationRental markup, with the Accommodation held in containsPlace and the maximum number of guests among its details. It says those instructions are intended for sites already connected with a Google Technical Account Manager and with access to Hotel Center, and its help pages point property managers to approved connectivity partners. For one cottage, the markup alone is not a way into that feature.

What applies to everyone is Google’s rule that markup describes what the page shows. Our guide to LocalBusiness structured data has the steps, and since a LodgingBusiness is a kind of LocalBusiness, they carry over. The free assessment on this site reads one of your pages as a machine does and names what is missing.