What a listing photograph leaves out

Nothing in most homestay listings is untrue. That is the problem.

The three tricks that are not lies

The wide lens. A 16mm lens makes a nine-foot room look like fourteen. No claim has been made. The room is simply not the shape you expected.

The clear morning. Every hill property is photographed on the two days a year the valley is visible. In August you will see cloud, and the cloud is lovely, but it is not what you booked.

The careful crop. The frame stops where the neighbour’s construction begins. Again, nothing false — just a decision about where the edge goes.

What we write instead

For every house we list, we add the sentence the listing would not have. The geyser that takes fifteen minutes. The last four hundred metres that need a high-clearance car. The bedroom that gets the road.

None of it stops people booking. It stops them arriving disappointed, which is a different thing and matters considerably more. A guest who was told about the geyser is not annoyed by the geyser — they brought it up as a joke at dinner.

Why the list stays short

We cannot honestly vouch for a house we have not slept in, and two people can only sleep in so many houses. Eleven is roughly that number. When we add one it is because we went, not because an owner sent us photographs.