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It’s not that people are being allowed to book less than a set minimum stay, it’s the opposite. And I haven’t been able to figure out the solution. But, for instance, we have a 4-day minimum stay set. However, once stuff is booked up, I then release some dates as a 3, 2 or 1 night minimum stay. I’ve always used the rule sets and not the settings for custom trip lengths (though I am trying them out now).
Whenever I change things, I scrupulously check them. I go to my page and I do a private search and make sure that the settings have been “set”. In this situation, I’ve set some 2-day minimums and checked that they were working. But even though we are booking steadily for less popular dates, we have had a couple of high-demand weekends with 3 or 2 day minimums that were not booking and couldn’t figure out why.
However, I’ve now had 2 different guests contact me about the calendar availability. One of them was trying to book with us for the first time but one of them was only trying to move her reservation backward by 2 days. Both said that when they clicked on the calendar availability that it said “3 (or 2) day minimum” and they were allowed to choose the dates. But when they tried to complete their actions (one was booking and one was making a change) that they were then told that there was a 4-day minimum and couldn’t complete the booking or change.
I was able to amend it by a special offer in the first case and by doing the reservation change myself in the second case, but it is a little concerning, a glitch of some sort. And I thought some of you may want to be aware of it. So if you have some dates that you’ve manually changed the minimum on that should’ve booked but haven’t, this might be the issue.
Sorry to hear that it’s happening to you to but good to know that it’s not a glitch personal to me
Fortunately, I’m not particularly interested in stays that are less than my normal minimum. But of course it’s very annoying because there is no way to find out if it’s been fixed or not, since the issue doesn’t show up until the payment page.
Did you notice that new pop-up box that they give you when you change your minimum directly on the full-calendar (as opposed to the multi-calendar) page? I’ve never seen that pop-up box before so am assuming it has to do with it. Please let me know if you get any further information, either it’s continuing or it’s fixed.
It pops up now when you change you make dates available on your calendar that are shorter than your minimum stay. Let me see if I can get a screenshot of it for you.
Ok, I got it! Here,
So, my minimum stay in my listing settings is 4 nights. But if I have a “stray” day or two, in between two other longer stays, I will sometimes lower the minimum to let them book. In this case, for demonstration purposes, I blocked off two dates, the 12th and 14th. And because of my 4-day minimum, the calendar automatically blocks off the 13th, the day left in between.
It says “Change to 1 night to make these dates available”. And it does this regardless of whether or not I have already done a Rule Set for a 1 night minimum stay. I’ve also noticed that these dates, where I’ve changed the minimum stay show up under Custom Trip Lengths and I’ve never used that before, only Rule Sets.
That’s the opposite of what is happening for me. I manually changed to a lower minimum stay and did every check I could and it showed the lower minimum on my calendar, on a search, etc and guests could also see the correct lower minimum but when they went to pay, that’s when they were told it was a higher minimum (even though it wasn’t).
Even though you’re the opposite, did you make any manual changes to your minimums before yours lowered?
What do you mean by “current searches”? Are you using the new theme searches, like for beachfront and stuff? Not every listing is going to show up under there, I would think most won’t. Do your listings show up if you just use the search bar with a destination and travel date at the top?
They all came up for me, all three tiny houses (which are, eeeeek, really cute!). And then a big house came up for me too. They all came right away when I put it in Grafton and “any weekend”. They are there, coming up and available to book.
They aren’t coming up if I choose “Tiny House” on the new search options, but they come up perfectly in a regular search with nothing more than the name of your town.
Do you know if you are using minStay arrival date,or minStay through date? I set my minStay by arrival date via Airbnb connected software. So I don’t remember which style Airbnb uses.
minStay arrival style means you set the minStay based on check in date.
minStay “through” means all minstays set on all dates during a guests stay must be met.
So if you have all dates set at minStay 1, but change Saturday to minStay 3, then it works 2 different ways based on the minStay style you are using.
minStay “arrival” in this case would only require a 3 night stay for check in on Saturday night. It would allow a 2 night stay on Friday.
minStay “through” would require a 3 night stay for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday arrivals. Because Saturday could only be booked with a 3 night minimum stay through no matter which date of arrival.
Not sure if that is your problem, but sometimes people are thinking about it 1 way and don’t realize the system is thinking about it a different way.
I understand, thank you. My system set min stay is 4 nights but on occasion, I will reduce my minimum stay for a particular check-in date, to fill in spots in between longer stays or to capitalize on a special event. It’s never not-worked before and, as suspected, it was a glitch. I forgot to come back up and do an update and so thank you for the reminder!
Airbnb confirmed this glitch with decreasing minimum stays and it did have to do with the new pop-up box (creating a conflict of some sort). It appeared to only affect a decrease in minimum stay and only in the situation that the system set min stay was not possible. I.e. My min stay is 4 nights and there were only 3 nights available and I decreased the min stay for those nights, but not if there were 4 nights available and I decreased the min.
Anyway, it has definitely cleared-up for me, though these things are usually rolling so other hosts should be aware.
Thanks @JJD for the info…
We too noticed some glitches that our minimum stays - once we removed them - were still there.
As well-- {different subject} – we noticed that a cancelled booking request (by the guest) still had the dates reserved (blocked off!) for a few months until we contacted airbnb. For some reason they didn’t open them up again - a glitch reported to “the team”
Curious — if my memory serves me correct… we used to be able to label the minimum night requirement? ie. Easter weekend, March Break, Concert… etc. I don’t see where we are able to do that any longer?
