The Booking Calendar .... Your best friend or your worst enemy !

When guests search for properties to rent at their desired location, aside from price (which is by far the biggest consideration), they are searching for specific arrival dates and total number of nights available. Your goal as owner should be to appear in as many of those searches as possible. However, if your goal is to receive as few bookings as possible, try these strategies;

- Require week long stays or longer

- Require specific day of the week check in (typically Saturday or Sunday)

Congratulations ! You have just told any family looking for a vacation less than 7 days that you are not interested in hosting them. And better yet, you are also telling potential guests that unless they want to begin their vacation on a specific day of the week that you require, you are also not interested in hosting them. There are actually owners who set requirements like this and vacation rental websites provide options for them to set these limitations.

If you desire revenue from your vacation rental, allow guests to check in when THEY want to and allow them to stay as long as THEY want. (within reason). Create an understanding with your potential housekeeping service that turn days can be any day of the week. Remember to allow your housekeeping team to turn the home by setting your check in and check out times accordingly. For our 2 and 3 bedroom properties, we set check out times at 10 AM and check in times at 4 PM. Most guests understand that it takes longer to prepare a 3 bedroom homes than a hotel room.

Now for some tips on managing your booking calendar:

- In low demand months, consider allowing guests to book shorter stays, 2 or 3 nights minimum. For high demand months, require longer stays, 5 to 7 nights

-As your calendar fills up, watch for the gap trap. For months with say, a 5 night minimum, you will wind up having 2, 3 or 4 night gaps between reservation dates. The booking websites will not allow travelers to book any of those nights as you have set a 5 night minimum. In fact, those nights will not even show up in any searches. So, periodically, you must set shorter minimums for those specific date gaps to fill them up in between the longer stay reservations.

- After all that, you will still have some 1 night gaps in your calendar. Instead of allowing a one night stay (we do not allow one night stays, too much work, not enough benefit), contact the guests staying before the lone night and the guests arriving after the lone night and see if you can lure them with a discounted rate to extend their stay one night.

-Many of the websites offer a last minute discount feature to automatically adjust any rates with last minute discounts that are approaching imminently. They are set up to allow the owner to choose how much of a discount and choose how far in advance the discount kicks in

Allow your property to be booked for all future dates. Many owners prefer not to do this as travelers will go out a year (or more) in the future to book popular dates (like Daytona Beach Bikeweek in our case) in the hopes that you have not yet set the event market rates for those dates. Instead, allow all future dates to be booked but set your standard rate at the level of your highest rate event. You will be surprised when you receive a few bookings for dates far in the future despite the high standard rate in place.

Once you have established a stable ongoing rental operation for your property, tweaking rates and scrutinizing your booking calendar every day becomes the best way to increase revenue

Happy Hosting !

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