How to make clear our travel dates are flexible?

I just finished our listing and wrote an introduction on this forum. I just wonder how I can make clear that we are not bound to specific dates. With our big live stock our priority is to find people who want to, and are able to handle this, and it’s easy for us to follow their preferred time to do a house sit. But on the listing a request is always connected to a time range, and on the forum it’s not allowed to “promote” yourself. I now put it in the descriptions on the listing, and added a few more or less random dates, but people who are looking for specific dates now will not find us, while they may be the perfect sitters for us. Anyone can advice on this? And maybe a suggestion for THS to make it possible to add flexible dates, for example “3 weeks in October/November” or so.

François

Put it in the heading and mention it right away in the description. Nomador has an option for “flexible dates”. It does help though to have a rough idea of what your dates might be. We don’t usually use any filters except for countries and areas that we are interested in.

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We put sit-date specific notes at the very top of our owner listing, e.g.
“Note: Sit dates include 1 day and night of overlap at start due to early departure and handoff training. You are welcome to stay in the home or to find your own accommodations, please plan to join us for dinner on day of arrival.”

A similar prominent note may help highlight your flexibility and large animal needs.

Happy travels!
Bruce

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Hi @MiqueFrançois. this is a great question. When setting up your dates, put in when you definitely need them there (including handover time), but then update your profile info to state that dates are flexible and can be discussed in detail with sitter at time of phone call.

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“2-3 weeks flexible monthly dates…”

The first words of your headline could be “Flex dates…” They need to be the first few words, because only the first 4 or 5 headline words show when viewing thumbnails on a laptop.

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Thanks for these replies. I see I’ll have to put it in text or header somewhere. I think it would be a big improvement if owners (and also sitters) can announce without any dates, but the entire system appears to be built around the dates, so that may be technically difficult.

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Ooh, I like that! I ask for the same thing though not quite as prominently and succinctly. Will update my owner listing accordingly.

I just came here to say your sit looks AMAZING!!

We’ve already lived our nomad days and have settled down (and vowed to stop flying) but had we still been out in SE Asia we would definitely have applied. I hope you find good sitters, maybe try promoting your listing in groups on social media that may have people who align with your values, or are similar (off grid living, buddhism, vegans, nomadic lifestyle, that sort of thing).

Best of luck! :blush: :pray:

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It doesn’t seem so difficult for TH to have an option for flexible dates. I have family and friends I could visit anytime, depending on when I could get the right sitter. My dog is getting older and has more needs, so I don’t want to risk booking a flight for certain dates then not being able to find the right sitter.

We’re new members, so excuse the question if the answer is published elsewhere.

We have a plan to go on holiday but are not fixed on the dates.
We could work around sitter availability.
Can date flexibility be indicated when we post the dates?

There is no real option for that.

You could state it in the title: “three weeks this summer (flexible)”, “a week around Easter” and then in your listing just list approximate dates.

Now with the new no-overlap rule, it might be good to keep those short, maybe list a few contiguous short periods. That way, more sitters will be able to contact you.

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I have done this; message me if you want to check out my listing.

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