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Last Minute Bookings

July 30, 2020

Historically, we have all been accustomed to booking lead times of weeks, sometimes months, especially during peak season. As with most things in 2020, things have changed significantly, and we have seen a dramatic decrease in booking lead times. Guests are deciding to travel just days in advance, and usually for an odd number of days, which can make managing your calendar and operations much more challenging. In order to capture those last minute bookings, and keep your calendar full in these uncertain times, we suggest using these three tools:

Last Minute Discounts

We've all been there: it’s two weeks out and your listing's calendar is empty. Your goal is occupancy, so you want to offer a discount on these dates. But, it is a lot to remember to adjust prices downward as the date creeps closer, especially when you're managing multiple listings. It can take hours to manually adjust these prices and how are you to know what price to drop to? This is exactly where a dynamic pricing tool can help: you customize when and how much your listing’s prices will drop as the stay dates draw closer to the book dates.

Last Minute Minimum Stays

In addition to dropping the price of your listings as the stay date draws closer, you may also want to drop the minimum length of stay you require. Depending on your market, you may aim to have seven (7) night minimums, however, in this travel environment, that may not be possible. Similar to the headaches with manually adjusting discounts, managing minimum stays across listings is probably an even bigger headache as you have to review and edit every calendar. This is another great way your pricing tool should work for you, by automatically adjusting your minimum stays to capture the last minute demand, which is probably looking for a shorter stay.

Gap Fills

Okay, so you have your listings now automatically dropping prices and reducing minimum stays as stay dates draw near, but what happens when you have bookings that leaves gaps between stays? This is where you need a tool to see those gaps and aim to fill them: a concept we call "Gap Fills" here at Beyond Pricing. When the gap between two bookings or blocks is shorter than your Minimum Stay setting, Gap Fills automatically reduce your Minimum Stay to the length of the gap so that those dates remain bookable.

Our goal at Beyond Pricing is to help short term rental managers succeed - and in times like these, that means keeping your calendar full through automated adjustments in pricing and stay requirements. With Beyond Pricing's Last Minute Discounts, Last Minute Min Stays, and Gap Fills, you can rest assured that your pricing tool is working for you to keep your occupancy up and revenue flowing in.

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