Spotlight Search

Most people know Spotlight as the search you get when you swipe down on the iPhone home screen. Type anything there and results come from across the phone — messages, apps, web, and now the app too. When a guest searches for something like “swimming pool” or “check in time”, matching park content appears in their results alongside everything else. Tapping it takes them straight to that page in the app.

What shows up in Spotlight

• FAQs
• Events
• Places
• Welcome pack items
• Offers
• Routes
• Home sales
• Current booking

Which results show first

If a search matches more than one type of content, Spotlight doesn’t just list them in a random order — places and events rank highest, followed by the welcome pack and current bookings, then routes, offers, and home sales, with FAQs ranked last. This only affects the order results appear in when several types match the same search; it doesn’t hide anything from a guest who’s allowed to see it.

What a search can match

Spotlight matches on far more than an item’s title. Each result also carries its description, the details guests are likely to ask about (prices, times, opening times, address and accessibility notes), and a set of keywords. Keywords include the item’s categories and tags — shown by their proper names, not internal keys — plus features the app already labels, such as “Dog Friendly”, “Free” or “Sleeps 6”, and the park’s own name for that section of the app (so searching “Experiences” finds a park’s places). An event or offer also carries its linked place’s name and address, so searching for a venue finds what’s happening there.

Staying up to date

The app keeps Spotlight results current automatically. Whenever it pulls fresh data from the server, it checks what’s changed — including tags, categories and flags such as dog friendly or sold — and updates just those items. There’s nothing staff need to do — and guests won’t notice a gap in results while it’s happening, because only the changed content is being refreshed, not the whole lot at once.

If iOS clears the search index for any reason (it can happen after an update), the app will quietly rebuild it the next time it opens.

Indexing only starts once the app has actually been opened and brought to the foreground at least once — so a guest who’s just installed the app or signed in won’t see their content in Spotlight until they’ve opened it that first time.

One thing worth knowing

Spotlight results follow the same rules as the app itself. If a piece of content is restricted — owner-only FAQs, for example, or segment-specific offers — it won’t show up for guests who aren’t supposed to see it. The same filtering applies whether a guest is inside the app or searching from their home screen.

Two further things are kept out of Spotlight (and Siri) even though they stay in the app: any individual item a content team has marked to be held back in the CMS, and homes for sale that have been marked as sold. Cancelled bookings aren’t shown either.

Call and Directions buttons on results

Some results can show native Call and Directions buttons, letting a guest ring or navigate without opening the app at all. Which buttons appear depends on the content type and what’s been set in the CMS:

• Places: Call (when a real phone number is set) and Directions (when the place has a location).
• Welcome pack items: Call, when a phone number is set. There’s no Directions button — a welcome pack item can’t carry a location.
• Routes and homes for sale: Directions, to the route’s start or the home’s location.
• Events and offers: Call and Directions, taken from the place the event or offer is linked to.
• FAQs and bookings: neither. A guest’s own unit location is never shared with Spotlight.

These buttons are a standalone shortcut from the search result. In the app itself the same details are tucked into separate sections of the page, and the in-app search results only show a title, image, and category.