This forum is dedicated to connecting hosts with other hosts. Sign up to get the latest updates and news just for AirBnb hosts! Note that we are not affiliated with Airbnb - we are just passionate hosts!
I had a crazy thought about switching to a 6-night minimum during high season and requiring check in on a particular day of the week. While that might be too specific, I was wondering whether anyone else is using unique availability settings to avoid or minimize gaps, or for other purposes. We are in our high season and have a 3 night minimum. However, if we find ourselves with a gap (we allow IB), for those dates, we may add an exception for a 2-night stay, or significantly raise the rate and allow 1 night.
But if you allow a 2 day minimum, then that’s going to apply to all bookings, won’t it? I wanted to switch to one day bookings from my usual 2 day minimum, but I realized I’d be opening up all future bookings for one dayers. I’m on IB also.
You can set different requirements for length of stay and checkin on a particular day, for any time period you want.
I have a 1-night minimum as a general rule, but 2-nights minimum if the stay includes a Friday or Saturday night, a 3-nights minimum during my peak periods(April to August and Oct 15th-Nov 6th and December.), then I add 2-nights minimum when I have only a 1-night gap I don’t want to fill with a 1-night booking (a turnover two days in a row is too much work for me) but I want to keep the calendar open should the booked guests want to add 1 night after or before his/her stay.
In the end a 1-night stay at Barthélemy’s is usually possible on weekdays from Jan to March exclusively.
If you select a custom date range, you can control when the 2-day minimum applies. Go to the Calendar->Manage Settings->Availability->[edit] Trip Length->Add a requirement for seasons or weekends. Then from the dropdown menu select “Specific Dates.”
Yes, high season (23 Dec - 6 Jan) I have a 7 night minimum arriving on Saturday.
Same goes for Feb 2018 and July - Aug 2018.
It is months away, and I do not want 2 or 3 night bookings that far out.
Currently I still have July and Aug 2017 on a 5 night minimum. They are almost fully booked with 5 - 10 night stays.
End of the week I will change the 5 night minimum to a 2 night minimum and increase the price for the hand full of 2 - 3 night gap.
I raise the number of minimum nights during the summer. Thought that it was worth a try, and gosh it worked! When all the dour day blocks had filled in, I reduced to three nights. At this point, I have a few single nights which I will use as recovery days. No reason to burn out completely.
This is how I do it: I’ve defined a season for my high season (Jan through April). Then I require Saturday check-in and check-out during that period of time.
I set the check-in day to Saturday, the minimum stay to 7 nights, and the maximum stay to 7 nights. This way, they can only book a 7 night stay and not an eight-night stay and ruin a weekend and probably a week.
It worked so well, I had 100% occupancy from the beginning of January until the middle of May this year. (Before you all gasp in horror at 100% occupancy “When will they do the cleaning??!”, we rent out our vacation/retirement home and have full-time staff that take care of our property and come in and clean and maintain during the week, usually while guests are out and about climbing mountains, snorkeling, etc.)
I do get most of my business through VRBO, not AirBnB, but I did get a couple of bookings through AirBnB this past season. But I believe that is because I have a fairly large and expensive property in a location where a lot of people come for longer vacations, and the AirBnB clientele is looking for smaller and less expensive accommodations.
I am loving the two day minimum booking now we are up and running! So much work to turn it over for one night only. I’ve also set a prep time before and after each booking thanks to another post on here. Phew ! That is all.
we rent out our vacation/retirement home and have full-time staff that take care of our property and come in and clean and maintain during the week, usually while guests are out and about climbing mountains, snorkeling, etc.)