We know that it’s tempting to use a ‘minimum length stay’ in order to attract longer staying guests or to encourage guests to stay an additional night.
However, this can actually mean your property will show as having no availability on major travel websites for anyone searching for a one night stay, and this is by far the most common search undertaken online. We recently analysed data for over 3,000 properties and compared those who have a ‘minimum length of stay’ greater than one night to those who allow one night stays. We discovered that properties without the ‘minimum length of stay’ restrictions have a staggering 40% higher occupancy!
We also discovered that properties with fewer restrictions sell 47% more room nights online and make 43% more revenue from the major travel websites. They also take 34% more bookings directly via their website!
This means that if you are restricting your length of stay you are missing out on a huge number of potential guests as well as showing no availability to those one night bookers, all of which affects your properties ranking on the major travel websites. So our best advice would be to remove your ‘minimum length of stay’ restrictions and offer a one-night price but at a higher nightly rate.
Of course, we all want to encourage guest to stay longer so here are some simple do’s and don’ts to help you along the way:
- Don’t turn away guests who only want to book for one night.
- Do allow guests to book one night but at a higher rate, therefore keeping you visible but maximising on your rates.
- Don’t impose minimum stay restrictions during off-peak periods.
- Do use minimum stays strategically in peak periods when occupancy is high by offering a promotional rate that is more tempting than the higher one-night stay rate.
With eviivo’s Promo Manager, you can easily alter rates depending on the season, time of the week or anything really! If you need to offer restrictions, that’s easy to do too.
If you’d like to know more about our award-winning hotel booking software, eviivo suite, book a demo today!
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