How not losing night between 2 stays?

1

Hello to all,

I try to google but couldn’t find an answer to my question.

I have a minimum stay requirement of 2 days and because of that I’m losing at least 2-3 nights a month when there is one day left between two stays.

I would like to make a rule where guests have to book the day after or the day before a stay if they want to book the second day after or before the date.

For example, if I have a guest who already booked from Friday to Sunday and another guest want to book the Wednesday , he also has to book the Thursday) or if he Wants to book the Tuesday, he has to book the Monday so I have no lost days.

How to set up these rules on Airbnb ?

Thanks

2

I can’t see how you can force a guest to book a day that they haven’t included in their date requirements

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I don’t think there is any way to have auto-adjusting variable minimum stays as you propose.

You could raise prices a bit and offer a discounted third night to incentivize guests to book the vacant dates. Some other hosts here have reported getting takers for such a deal.

Or change your minimum back and forth from two to one while blocking the next months, but that doesn’t seem very beneficial.

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Well, you know, you just have to get the right CS agent when you call in to do it. :joy:

But, seriously, I think @thecaveflat is talking about settings and/or rule sets. However, they are not that efficient.

@thecaveflat, One way to do this is to set rules for check-in and check out dates for individual dates. For instance, if you someone books to check out on Mon then you go in and set a rule set for Monday and a few days after that that says check-in only on Mondays and/or no check-out on Tue or Wed or Thur, depending on your goals. This will be very hands-on, meaning you will need to amend your rule sets and calendar everytime someone books, but it only takes a minute.

Or you could set a discount for booking 3 or 4 days on that Monday and Tuesday. That way people could still book either of those days for just 2 days but you would encourage or attract people to book more days for a better nightly price.

You can also give a discount for people booking on Monday that are booking 4 or 5 nights and that will help fill in the weekdays around your weekend bookings.

However, if your minimum stay is only 2 days then I recommend that you first try raising your minimum stay to 3 or 4 nights, if you think it might work in your market and listing.

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I had that issue when my min for 3 nights. Everyone would book Thurs-Sun so I would have Mon-Wed unbooked. I changed it to a 5 might min, slightly increased the nightly rate, and I block the two days in between so that I can clean. Try changing your min from 2 to 3 nights and increase the rate a bit to off set the lost revenue from the unbooked days.

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I read somewhere (and I think it was an airbnb article) that if you are more than 50% booked that your rates are too low.

Maybe try raising your rates so that the ‘spare days’ are seen not as a loss of overall income compared to ‘now’…

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@Rolf

I fell for that, raised my rate from $55-60 on two separate occasions over a year or so. Immediately following each increase, guest docked a star for Value, so lost my nerve and backed down.

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“That” being the “your rates are too low”, not host suggestions

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This then is a ‘wake up’ call that perhaps you need to add value to your listing?

I had similar things happen at one time with one of my rooms. It turned out it was not solely about cost; it was in my description of the space. Guests read my description for a shared bathroom space as ‘private’ and were downgrading when they ‘discovered’ it was not exclusive to them. When I rewrote the description I only got guests who were aware and were ok.

Guests see peeling paint or dirty doorframes as value indicators.

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10

Like @Debthecat said, it looks like you are wanting guests to book days not in their search.

There isn’t a way to force bookings be back to back on the platform unless you are willing to do a lot of manipulation.

You can set a minimum time between rentals to give you cleaning time but you cannot say “if guest A checks out on Monday, I want my listing to show as available only if guest B wants to check on Monday night”

If you are willing to constantly set required check-in days for the week a booking ends, like @JJD said you can force check in to be the day of check out. Unless you are in an incredibly high volume area, I would think you would get fewer bookings.

If you are in a high volume area, set a minimum stay of 7 nights, maximum stay of 7 nights, check in only on a specific day like Saturday & checkout only on that same day so you are guests are checking out mornings & new guests check in that afternoon.

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Thanks all for your reply!

My market is actually Budapest Hungary 5th district where the average stay is 2-3 nights, I need only 1-2 hours for the cleaning so i don’t need to block any day to do it.
It’s not worth it for my guests and me to propose only one night stay, I tried to offer discount to encourage guest to book so I’m not losing any day but it’s not working very well, I’m losing an average 3-4 days every month because of that which is more than 10% of income.

For those who think, I “force” people to book some dates, my flats won’t display if the date is not suitable to the guest.
I just want to find a way for people to book some dates so I don’t lose any day.
Thanks to jjd, I found the solution:)

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Hi jjd,
I tried your suggesstion and it’s working, thanks so much !

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My husband was told 70% is the “sweet spot” by hotel experts.

I take the money and risk a few lower ratings on value. Our property isn’t a “value” property. Guests select it for our views, location and amenities and not because it’s “cheap”.

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