Hi all, I usually don’t have an issue finding a sitter for my 2 cats over the holidays, but this year I haven’t gotten a single application and as it’s a little over a month away, I am starting to get nervous! The sit is fairly long so I don’t know if that is awkward timing for people, or if there is another reason, but I already have plans to visit my family, so I hope I can get my cats taken care of!
If have any suggestions for how I might be able to convince a sitter, I am all ears! Thanks for listening to my worries!
(Post edited by the Forum team to comply with the Community Rules).
Hello @alisonjane, before we can offer suggestions, you will need to follow the link below to add your listing so we can see it. You are competing with thousands of owners in a similar situation to you as the festive season is where demand for sitters is greatest but supply is lowest. Many sitters have been booked for months, especially where the sit maybe for a fairly long period as you say yours is. How to add a listing or profile link to your Forum profile!
Spotting your Austria location, then there seem approximately 150 open housesits in Schengen area for Christmas (plus 1,000 in UK).
Firstly, we encourage that you use magnifying glass “search” feature at top of THS Forum page - there have quite a lot of similar posts recently and many comments on those threads are generic in creation of high quality listing.
Second, for your listing then here’s a few brief thoughts.
Size. You can’t change this but one bedroom listing seems challenging for festive period. Many people seek to be social. And probably limits any crossover period with PP and HS in same property.
Listing text. Expand content to include more on pets (how long left, where sleep, any other atypical characteristics). Include details of local attractions, airports, transit, any festive treats.
Dates. Is there any flexility in your dates? If yes, state in listing. Travel over festive period can be expensive and/or tricky. Greater flexibility = more applicants.
Photos. Your cats are cute. But add/replace some with photos of other topics … property, neighbourhood, attractions.
Third, Christmas period is a time of extreme excess demand for housesitters. It would seem pragmatic to reflect on a Plan B in case not confirm housesitter.
@alisonjane What a lovely city you live in! Your past sitters have reviewed favourably which is great. Some tweaks I would suggest are removing the cat photos which double up; remove in your Introduction about it being a summer sit; clarify if the cats sleep on the bed with you as it looks like they do and not all sitters are comfortable with this; and complete the entire Amenities list. If I was you, I would look at your own listing from a sitter’s point of view and see how appealing it would be to you. Remember, you have much competition this time so it might pay you to improve your listing so it’s like a real estate promotion.
You can remove your dates and re-post them to make your listing New once you have hopefully taken notice of suggestions made by members.
As @Silversitters says, having a backup plan is vital.
I suggest that add a photo of the kitchen , the balcony - one of the view from the flat windows / balcony and the nearby town attractions / river ?
If there are events happening locally during this time add that to your listing .
(You listing talks about you going away for the summer so you need to rewrite that )
You have a lot of competition with over 4,100 hosts still looking for sitters over the Christmas period . There simply won’t be enough sitters available to cover all of these sits ( many sitters don’t sit over the festive season , others already have THS sits confirmed and others do paid sits on other platforms over this holiday time )
so be prepared with a Plan B .
I don’t know when you posted your listing, but another factor might simply be that it’s pretty late now to be looking for Christmas sits. I love sitting at Christmas, but would usually want to get a gig confirmed by the end of September.. I would guess that the pool of sitters still looking is pretty small. There’s nothing you can do about this, of course. But for future reference..
We haven’t found a Christmas sit yet as they all include new year too. We need to be somewhere on the 30th but so far no luck with just Christmas. What about splitting your sit in two.