Aloha,
Due to the size and nature of our home and property, we have specific qualities we desire from the sitters. We have identified these requirements in the heading of our listing and still, out of the over 600 saves for our home, less than 5% have read the heading. This means that the list of potential sitters is useless because the filters don’t allow us to only show (couples over 50, no families, and current homeowners).
If we cut off notifications, we can’t receive notifications when our sitters have sent a message.
Is it correct that the only way around this is to have the next sitters contact us via our personal text and email and keep all the notifications turned off?
It’s no problem to do this but I’d like to clarify that this is our only way around the constant notifications about our sit being saved.
We really enjoy THS and greatly appreciate the bonus pet parents who have provided such great care of our furbabies when we travel.
I look forward to your suggestions.
Thanks for reaching out. For starters, we ask them. Next, we conduct a quick property search on the address they share. It’s just something that’s important to us.
Hi @annamarie I’m a sitter so I am unaware of how you are ‘notified’ that a sitter has saved your listing, but if it is as an email from THS, and you are tired of these ‘saved’ emails arriving in your inbox, then you can use your email system to filter these specific email out to another folder, or even to delete them without even seeing them. I do this for a lot of ‘shopping offer’ emails. If you need help, message me.
It sounds like you are in Hawaii (by the aloha), so not surprising your listing will get saved. I would too!
Mahalo for your suggestion. Yes, we are in Hawaii and Yes, whenever someone saves our property, we receive an email notification that a sitter has saved our listing. This is the same notification that we have received a message from someone. We don’t want to miss a message from a sitter so I haven’t stopped notifications but I suspect this is our only option.
No, e don’t accept non-Us sitters. We don’t want the risk that the sitter has to travel so far. Too many uncontrollable events can come into play to cause delays or travel complications.
Sorry, I neglected to answer your question fully. We subscribe to a service to verify the owner of a property. I’m not certain if other countries have such a data base.
I am a sitter, so I can’t be sure what options you have but I think they must be similar. As a sitter, I have the choice of being notified about saved listings by email or “push notifications”. You can try on the app (better for this than the website). When you press the “me” icon, you can go to settings, then notifications.
Thank you very much. I’ll certainly check on the options that we have as a host.
It has been very educational and quite fun to sit side by side with our sitters and share what each others site looks like. At this moment I don’t have a “sitter” here with me to help filter the hundreds of saves. I’ve just had to rely on the first five applicants and sift through each of their profiles.
Thanks again.
Whatever email service you use should have a filter that you can customize to send certain emails to trash or a folder of your choice. You would just specify what the subject phrase is for the email rerouting to happen. Using such a feature would keep other THS emails coming to you, like billing, etc., which you’d still presumably want.
I don’t know how it works for HO’s as we are sitters, but I wonder if there is a way to write a message and send to all sitters who have saved your listing that says “thank you for saving our listing, however, please take note of our requirements…” and list them there and ask them to unsave your listing if they don’t meet that requirement.
I understand if 600 ppl have saved your listing it would take forever…but cut and paste…or can you send multiple messages at once?
I’ve received generic (not personalized) messages from HO’s that look like it was sent to everyone who saved their listing before but I’ve no idea how they did it.
I wonder if we saved your listing! LOL we meet those requirements
@annamarie
How often have you successfully found a sitter by reaching out to those that saved your listing ?
.
It’s often reported on the forum that this is not an effective method since sitters (that meet your criteria ) may not be available on the dates you need and there is nowhere for them to indicate in which location they are looking for sits and on which dates .
It may be best to publish your listing and then after 5 applications are received, it will be paused . You can then determine if any of these meet your criteria. If not you can decline them and unpause your listing .
When Sitters are looking for Sits using the Map feature, the heading does not appear at all, and it is possible to “heart” listings when in the Map feature.
So it is possible that Sitters are clicking on the “heart” and never saw the heading.
We would love to sit for you someday, and we meet your criteria!
Interesting! This is a good tip that THS could use to improve the site and please the users.
We do have a sit coming up for two weeks in May and June. We have already booked sitters but please save our home for future sits.
Mahalo from Holualoa
Hi @annamarie
Agree with the suggestions above made already. Homeowner here.
-You will be a desirable sit.
regardless, publish your dates as you know them with some months notice, and block time within 48h or less to respond to applicants as you screen them. There will be a 5 applicant limit (regardless of appropriateness for you) Until dealt with, ( unsuitable ones decline) your listing pauses.
seeking out sitters or sending messages to people who saved you MAY get you a sitter, but it is usually pretty low yield. However, I think if saved- when you post a listing request; the system notifies them of a live sit request. I don’t put much weight into saves. Sitters who have saved you may consider you if they are available at the time listed.
while some sitters don’t like to read a lot of text in a sit listing, experienced sitters are looking for clues for your sit of whether it is a fit for them too in terms of expectations etc.
Put what you are looking for (your needs, dealbreakers) in text in your sit listing. Something like “thank you for your interest in sitting for us - at this time we can only consider sitters who are : x y z
Absolutely state in your listing that sitters will be asked to provide an address if they apply to your listing. It’s good to be clear up front with what you want. It may limit sitters, but i understand you have do what works for you.
*Consider opening to sitters from west coast Canada (although right now, there may be less apply) as distance from travel would be same or less than many regions in US.
add your home profile to your profile here- the sitters here can give more specific feedback on balancing expectations with the shared mutual exchange philosophy of the THS platform.
