1D. Our recommendation systems
How Nearhomey.com uses recommendation systems
All great properties deserve to be discovered. That’s why we use “recommendation” systems to select, display, and/or rank information on our Platform in a way that’ll help you discover properties we think you’ll like. For example, on the “Stays” landing page, you’ll find several recommendation systems, including:

• Trending destinations: Destinations you may want to travel to based on bookings made by other travelers whose searches were similar to yours.
• Homes guests love: Home properties with high review scores.
• Looking for the perfect stay? Properties (as opposed to destinations) that you may want to stay at based on bookings made by other guests whose searches were similar to yours.

Our search results are also a recommendation system. In fact, they’re the recommendation system that our customers use the most, so be sure to check out “Our default ranking and sorting options” section.

All the recommendation systems we use provide recommendations based on one or more of the following factors:

• What you tell us when you are looking to book a Travel Experience, such as destination, dates, number of guests, etc.
• The information we’ve gathered based on your previous interactions with our Platform, such as your past searches, existing reservations, etc., unless you opted out of the personalized recommendations.
• Any other information on how you currently interact with our Platform, including the country where you are while browsing.
• An Accommodation’s performance on our Platform:
• its click-through rate (how many people click on it);
  • its gross bookings (how many bookings are made with that Accommodation);
  • its net bookings (how many bookings are made with that Accommodation minus how many are canceled).
  • Information about an Accommodation’s availability, pricing scores, review scores, etc.

To make it as easy as possible for you to find and book an Accommodation you like, each factor can be more or less important in different cases, depending on what we think is most likely to produce a list of properties you may want to book.

Our default ranking and sorting options
Our search results are also a recommendation system. They show all the Accommodations (hotels, apartments, etc.) that match your search. If you like, you can use filters to narrow down your results.

To check all the booking options an Accommodation offers, just select it.

When you first get your search results, they’ll be sorted (“ordered”) by “Our top picks” (called “Popularity” on our app):

• To appear high up on the page, an Accommodation needs to do well in each of these three areas:
  • Click-through rate: How many people click on it;
  • Gross bookings: How many bookings are made with that Accommodation;
  • Net bookings. How many bookings are made with that Accommodation minus how many are canceled.
• Those numbers depend on many factors, including review scores, availability, policies, pricing, quality of content (e.g. photos), and other features.
• Other things can also influence an Accommodation’s ranking – for example, how much commission they pay us on bookings, how quickly they usually pay it, whether they’re part of our Genius program or Preferred Partner (+) Program, and, in certain places*, whether we organize their payments.
• Any information we’ve gathered based on how you interact with our Platform (including what you tell us) will also be a factor unless you opted out of the personalized recommendations.
  * Currently, this ranking factor only applies to US Accommodations booked by US-based customers.

Many of these factors help our recommendation systems decide which Accommodations might be the most appealing and relevant to you. Some play a small role in that decision, while others play a significant role – the importance of each factor can change depending on the Accommodation’s features and how you and other people use our Platform.

For example, an Accommodation’s click-through rate and number of bookings often play a significant role in these decisions as they directly reflect the Accommodation’s overall appeal and how satisfied its guests tend to be with what it offers. A high click-through rate usually means that an Accommodation makes a good first impression on our Platform (e.g. through images, amenities, or descriptions), and getting a lot of bookings indicates that many people find it meets their requirements.

However, other factors play a role as well. For example, we might give preference to Accommodations that are part of our Genius program or offer versatile, user-friendly payment policies. After all, these factors suggest that these Accommodations understand how important service and convenience are to our customers.

Our recommendations are also influenced by how other customers with similar preferences use our Platform. For example, if “Person A” often books Accommodations in Paris, Barcelona, and Rome, and “Person B” often books Accommodations in Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Berlin, and Madrid, then our recommendation system might predict that Person A would also be interested in properties in Berlin and Madrid.

If an Accommodation in your search results has a badge that says “Ad,” it means that the Service Provider has paid for it to appear there.

If you would prefer us not to order your search results in our default way, you can sort them in other ways, such as:

• Homes & apartments first: Homes and apartments appear higher than hotels and other types of Accommodation.
• Price (lowest first): Accommodations with lower prices appear higher up.
• Genius discount first: Genius Accommodations appear higher than other Accommodations.
• Property rating (high to low): Accommodations with more stars* and/or higher quality ratings* appear higher.
• Property rating (low to high): Accommodations with fewer stars and/or lower quality ratings appear higher.
• Top reviewed (called “Best reviewed” in our app): Accommodations with higher review scores* appear higher. If you find any instances where this isn’t the case, it’s because we also factor in reliability (i.e. number of reviews). For example, an Accommodation with 1,000 reviews and an average score of 8.2 could appear higher than an Accommodation with 5 reviews and an average score of 8.3.
• Distance from (X): Accommodations that are closer to X (e.g. the city center) appear higher on the page. (When we say “close,” we mean “close in a straight line.”)
• Property rating: Accommodations with more stars appear higher up. The ones with lower prices appear higher within each segment (5 stars, 4 stars, etc.).
• Best reviewed and lowest price: Accommodations with higher review scores appear higher. Within each 0.5 segment (between 10 and 9.5, between 9.5 and 9, etc.), the ones with lower prices appear higher.

* Check out “Star ratings, review scores, and quality ratings” (section 1J).

Keep in mind that whatever sorting option you choose, the factors described in “Our top picks” may still influence things. For example, those factors might act as “tiebreakers” between two or more Accommodations that would otherwise appear in the same spot. However, the “Our top picks” factors are purely secondary because they’re only used where we need to decide which of two properties to put first.

Personalized recommendations
Some of our recommendation systems go beyond your search parameters and filters and make personalized recommendations based on how you have interacted with Nearhomey.com systems such as destination postcards, nearby destinations, and our search results. If you’re based in the EEA, you can change your settings so our recommendation systems do not provide personalized recommendations. To do so:

On our desktop or mobile site: Select “Manage personalized recommendations” in the footer.
On our app: Select “Manage personalized recommendations” in the banner.
Even if you do that, we may still retain some information about you so that we can provide you with our services and give you a more convenient experience, such as setting your language preference on our Platform based on where you are. This could be information that you provided (e.g. your phone number, email address) or that we gathered based on how you interact with our Platform.

Your preference on personalized recommendations will apply to any device you have signed in to your Nearhomey.com account. If you’re not signed in to your account, your preference will not apply to other devices, and it’ll be saved as part of your “cookies.” When that cookie expires, so will your preference.