Alternative to nearly-identical, duplicate listings for flexible floor plan that can be either 3BD/3BA or 4BD/4BA?

[Gary890]

Greetings, any guidance on the best and least confusing way to list a custom home that can host as a 3 bedroom/3 bath or a 4 bedroom/4 bath? We don't want to cause confusion, do too much extra work, or miss out on searches if someone filters on 3/3 or 4/4.

We would never rent the 4th bedroom/bath on its own--only to someone already renting the main house. And for a variety of reasons, we prefer to rent as 3 bedroom/3 bath unless it's needed to secure the booking of a larger party, for a valued/return guest, or to try harder to get a booking when it's otherwise slow. Because the 3/3 configuration is our preference, we would make the 4/4 price quite a bit higher so it's worth overriding. Perhaps some months we would just snooze the extra listing.

We've seen some discussions here a few years ago that were related--but we don't want one listing that says it's a 4/4 and then tries to shrink it to a 3/3 unless you pay more or have a lot of guests. And as stated, we want the search behavior to be accurate.

Is there a better way to do this than to duplicate the 3/3 listing, convert the duplicate to a 4/4 listing, show them both at the same time, and do all the work to keep them in sync, calendars synced to avoid double-booking, etc?

Do we keep the photos the same except in the 4/4 listing, also include the 4th bedroom/bath photos and appropriate text? Or put just a few "teaser" photos in the 4/4 listing, plus the addl photos and then try to get potential guests to see the main listing? (Oh, also I didn't look but is there a way to put a link in these listings to each other?)

Thanks in advance for any guidance,

-Gary

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Gary890 The only way to do this is with 2 separate listings. You can duplicate the first to make the second. The listings can be linked so that a booking for one blocks the other and vice versa.

Be warned - when duplicating the listing the system defaults to things like a flexible cancellation policy, Instant Book etc even if the original listing did not have these features. Airbnb being a bit sneaky I am afraid.

[Sarah977]

@Gary890  As advised, you need 2 listings. And no, I wouldn't put a few 'teaser' photos on the 4/4- show the whole place because if someone is filtering for 4 bedrooms, they need to see the whole place, not be sent to another listing-  you want to make things simple for guests- many are lazy and read as little as possible.

[Inna22]

@Gary890 if I understand you correctly, you would like to rent your house two ways: a three bedroom three bath, or a three bedroom three bath plus a four bedroom four bath compound. Is that correct? In that case, those are you two listings. In other words, you will need to have a listing for your three bedroom three bath and the second listing that is for the entire property, everything combined. You do not even need to use the more complicated linked listings option. You would only use it if you did 3/3, 4/4 and the entire property, which is something that I do with one of my houses. You just need to import and export your calendar to make sure you did not get a double booking.

[Gary890]

Thanks all for the speedy, friendly replies and--thankfully--same advice from all three of you. <whew> 

Best of luck to all of you, crazy times.