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Ask HN: How to incentivate owners to keep availability calendars updated?

4 points by Lucadg ↗ HN
In our reservation system a basic requirement is that the availability calendars are update regularly so that search results are fresh and users do not need to wonder if the accommodation is actually available. Owners need to confirm at least each 48 hours that the calendar is ok (just click on refresh). Editing or adding a reservation refreshes them automatically.

Now, some owners complain saying "why shall I refresh? If I did no changes it means nothing has changed". But in many cases it means something has changed and the owner did not update it.

Our ideas: - calendar older than 48 hours disappears from the page - the fresher the calendar the better ranking in search results - fresh calendar allows Book Now. Not fresh calendar just Contact Us and discussion in ticket. - if the calendar was not reliable (date were free but the owner replies they are not) punish owner with worse search results.

Just wondering if the bright minds at HN have some more, better, ideas! Thank you in advance for any comment.

8 comments

[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 28.6 ms ] thread
nedwin
You might also consider putting a "reliability" index next to the users name and allowing users to sort by this index. So if a user often fails to have their calendar up to date they would have a low score. This would be an incentive for them to keep their calendars updated.
Magna
sounds good, maybe something temporally, it can happend that an owner can be offline for some reasons (no adsl for some days or other problems), so it can be a malus for 1 week (or another period) and then back to normal .
Lucadg
as it is now, no permanent damage is done when the calendar is not update for a while. But actually it would be nice to have a "last 3 months average update time" which means both no permanent damage but also consider recent behavior.
Magna
Yes, no permanent damage, but it can be something like every 24 hours after the 48 hours you don't refresh, one point less until you refresh and the malus disappear.
Lucadg
this seems overly complicated and does not add any value to the idea. Also note that "every XX hours" requires cronjobs or other ways which add another layer of complications and even possible server overload. All can be done of course, but it needs to be worth it. Maybe I am missing the point?
Lucadg
we have this embedded in the "recommended" order, which is the default one given on the first search results. It's an algorithm which considers a few paramaters and gives points. These points are reduced according to the number of hours which have passed since the last calendar update. So Owners already have the incentive. Your idea could be interesting anyway. We may allow to order by "last updated calendar". Thanks for the comment!
mastazi
Maybe a reminder on top of control panel's home could help, or an e-mail (but the owner sould have the option to disable such e-mails or to decide frequency).
Lucadg
yes, both good ideas.