Managing the shift of available dates on your short term rental calendar can be difficult and time consuming. That’s why we’re excited to roll out a new feature: Reservation Gap Adjustments!
Reservation Gaps Are Generally Harder To Fill
Say you have a guest checking out on Wednesday and another checking in on Thursday. There’s a 1-day “gap” in your calendar that Wednesday night, and these short gaps between bookings are generally more difficult to fill.
Potential guests won’t necessarily see that the property is available unless they’re looking at that specific Wednesday night or your calendar isn’t wide open. That means that potential guests who are looking for that one night may go elsewhere.
That’s why we automatically apply discounts to 1- and 2-day reservation gaps in your calendar—to increase the likelihood that you get booked for these nights that are traditionally difficult to fill.
If Beyond Already Sets Discounts, Then What’s New Here?
Some of our customers have been asking for more control over how they price gaps, and we’ve been listening. That’s why we’re giving you access to the levers so that you can customize your gap adjustments.
This feature allows you to set custom price increases or decreases that automatically apply to gaps between bookings. Additionally, you can set different adjustments for different length gaps, and you have the power to control which days of the week your adjustments apply to.
How Can I Use It?
Every short term rental market and listing is unique, so there is no single "correct" Reservation Gap Adjustment. However, there are some general guidelines that we recommend considering when optimizing your Reservation Gap Adjustments.
By default, Beyond sets discounts to 1- and 2-day gaps, ignoring the 2-day gap discount on weekends. In general, we recommend that you keep gap discounts. In most markets and for most properties, gaps are difficult to fill, and you’ll want to capture a booking during this period if possible.
Utilizing gap discounts to help sell gaps that appear on the calendar is an easy way to help optimize your revenue management strategy through occupancy growth. While we recommend discounting gap nights, we also recognize that there are exceptions to using gap discounts because every listing is unique.
You may want to also consider discounts for longer gaps if it makes sense for your property. Let’s say you have a 7-bedroom home that gets a lot of week-long bookings, but doesn’t often see a 3-day stay. You love the week-long bookings, but if you have a 3-day gap in your calendar, you may want to be more aggressive about capturing potential revenue.
In this case, you’ll want to add an additional discount for 3-day gaps to increase the likelihood that you get booked during those gap periods.
Additional Use Cases
Using gap discounts is an effective strategy for most short term rental properties, but we do recognize that there are some exceptions given the uniqueness of some properties and markets.
Review Your Average Length of Stay
If your property is in an area where single night bookings are common, you may want to reduce the discount percentage or remove adjustments entirely. For example, if your property is near an airport, you don’t need to heavily encourage single-night bookings because you’re swimming in them. You can use your Listing Level Stats page to review the average length of stay for your listing to see how popular 1 or 2 night reservations are for you.
For more information regarding how this data can help your revenue management strategy, check out our Listing Level Stats support page.
Set Increases to Ensure Profitability
If you don’t generally allow shorter bookings because they’re not profitable for your business, you may be able to use Reservation Gap Adjustments to get more revenue in the door!
Of course you’d prefer a longer stay, but you would accept a short stay if it filled a gap in your calendar and you could ensure that it’s profitable, right? In this case, you may want to use our Gap Fills feature to reduce your minimum stay length, thus allowing for shorter reservations that fill gaps in bookings. Then, use our Reservation Gap Adjustments feature to charge a premium on those nights, ensuring that you will fill up your calendar if it’s profitable to do so.
Short-term rental property calendars can require a lot of maintenance to ensure your revenue management strategy is fully optimized, and Beyond is here to help. Be sure to review your current Reservation Gap Adjustment strategy and make sure it’s right for you.
For more information, visit our Reservation Gap Adjustment support page.
.png){kind=small}
.png){kind=small}
