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How to Effectively Utilize Last-Minute Discounts

May 18, 2021

Last-minute discounts are a great way to increase the likelihood that you receive a booking in the immediate short term. By default, Beyond inputs a discount of 25% for reservations booked within the last three days to stay and 10% for the last seven days to stay. You can now adjust these, as well as create additional discounts for a variety of time periods.

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We encourage using last-minute discounts to fill any availability in the near future. Unlike airlines that raise prices last minute due to business travel, both hotels and vacation rentals tend to drop prices last minute to get their remaining available rooms booked.

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In order to give yourself the best chance of getting booked, it's imperative to undercut the market for any availability in the next 3-7 days. We recommend reviewing your average booking lead time for your listing and market to adjust how many days out you should start discounting available inventory. Please keep in mind these discounts will never go below the minimum price you have set.

Last-Minute Discounts In Action

This feature also allows you to add and control price increases for the future. In general, guests who book far in advance are often willing to pay more to secure their ideal property. By default, we input an increase of 10% for reservations made for more than 270 days into the future.

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You can adjust last-minute discounts and increases in the Customize tab for your listing. There, you'll see our default discounts already listed. Input whatever percentage discounts you feel are appropriate and hit the green "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the screen.

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The graph below is a visual aid designed to give context to affect these discounts and increases on your Base Price. Here’s an example of setting a price increase of 10% for dates more than 6 months out (180 days):

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Looking at this example, you can see that on December 4th, 2021, we start with a Base Price of $125 and we are decreasing the day by $36 because it's the low season in this property’s market.

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Then, we increase the day by $27 because it’s a Saturday, a day that is usually in higher demand. Finally, we add in the 10% increase for any stay dates more than 180 days from today. This is a good example of how users can set last-minute discount increases to automatically increase pricing for dates further out, where guests should be paying a premium.

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