The right questions
on the way to 5 stars.

First for beautiful rooms. A good picture is the reason they stop at all. After that the checking starts: whether their days will work in this house. The questions behind that are never spoken.

Where do I put my suitcase. Where do I sit with my coffee in the morning. Is the dining table really big enough for us. Where can the child play. Can you sit outside undisturbed or can anyone see me. How far is it from the car to the door. Am I on my own here or in the middle of a development. Can I really take a holiday here with a dog.

These are not demands about the fittings but questions about how a day runs. And before booking they are answered mainly by the pictures.

Because nobody puts it that way. Hardly anyone writes beforehand to ask how many steps there are in front of the door, or whether the sofa seats everyone who sleeps in the house. The question is asked all the same – silently, while looking through the pictures.

That is also why the subject never shows up in feedback. A house learns what guests praised after they were there. What they did not find beforehand, it does not learn.

The ones that are not rooms. A picture list is usually built along the floor plan: living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, terrace. The ways between them are on no list.

Yet that is where half the open questions sit: the way from the parking space to the door, the hallway with somewhere to put the suitcase, the steps in front of the door, the staircase that looks different with a child than without.

Such shots need no day of their own. They only have to be on the list before the day starts – there is more on that under what has to be ready in the house.

The question of space is the most delicate one – and it rarely hangs on the dining table. Whether eight or six sit there sorts itself out on holiday. A house with eight beds and a sofa for four does not sort itself out: by the first rainy day half the group is sitting on the floor.

So the living area has to show in the picture how many can really sit there. Scale comes from things whose size everybody knows: a table laid with as many settings as really fit around it, a bed made up rather than without.

How far a picture may flatter and where the trouble starts is set out under what a room picture promises.

That is the question behind the question about the neighbours. A tightly framed picture shows the house on its own – even when it is the fortieth in a development.

Both are a good offer, just for different guests. Those looking for quiet book the secluded spot. Those arriving with children find a playground, a pool and other families in a holiday park – and want to see exactly that.

The question only stays open when no picture answers it. A shot from the edge of the terrace looking back, one from a little distance, or one from above shows the setting as it is. What becomes visible from the air is set out under a drone above the house.

No – which is why a picture list does not look the same for everybody. The same house, three different guests, three different lists.

A family with children of four and seven wants to know how many floors the house has and whether there is an internal staircase that matters for the children. And how the grounds are fenced – whether the area around the playground is safely separated for a four-year-old.

Somebody working remotely looks for something else: a proper desk they can work at daily for three weeks. And a couple over sixty asks about the steps from the parking space to the front door, whether there is a step-free way into the house, and how you get into the shower – a threshold or a step over.

None of these questions appears in an enquiry. Every one of them would be visible in a picture, if that picture has been taken. Which ones stay open in your case is what the listing check shows: upload the pictures and the description text, and the tool goes through both from the point of view of the individual kinds of guest – separated by whether a sentence is enough or a photograph is needed. Free, no sign-up. It runs in German.

The effort pays off somewhere no statistic records it: whoever has seen everything beforehand checks nothing on arrival. They just unpack.