Before we get started, users should know that Minimum Stay Restrictions are used to control how long a booking should be on certain dates. These settings should be used with a knowledge of your market, and the kind of bookings you want to get. 

How to set minimum stay restrictions? 

Like any other customizations, the Minimum Stay Restrictions can be applied to the Listing, Group, or Account level. 

The minimum stay options can be accessed from the "Edit" button on the Customizations panel when you review prices for a listing.

Here's how you can use the available options:

Min Stay Recommendation Engine

If you are not sure what Minimum Stay Restrictions would work for your listing, you can use our Min Stay Recommendation Engine which helps you create minimum stay rules either Short-term or Mid-term based on the market data of your hyper-local area. This tool focuses on revenue maximation however, it still allows you to apply your preferences by making it editable!

To access this, just click the "Setting suggestions available!" button and from there you have the option to generate either Short-term or Mid-term recommendations. Once the data are generated, you have the option to only select the rules you wish to apply.

You can learn more about how this tool works here.

Select a Minimum-stay profile 

There are two available options here -

1. Default Min Stay Rule

This is the default setting that'll be applied to any dates that don't have one of the special rules that can be applied as an exception. You can choose one of three values:

1. Fixed (most common): You can choose a default minimum stay to be set for weekdays and weekends. You must set a min-stay in each box, and must enter a number greater than zero.
   
   
2. Booking Value: If the value in the box is 300 (currency same as that of the listing), then we calculate a minimum stay for the check-in date such that a booking value less than 300 is not possible. As an example, if the prices for 5 consecutive dates between 2 bookings is (100, 200, 150, 100, 200), then the minimum nights for those dates will be (2, 2, 3, 2, 2) where the values will be calculated like this: 100+200=2 night, 200+150=2 nights, 150+100+200=3 nights, 100+200=2 nights. If your primary focus is revenue then this is a good fit for you.
   
   
3. None (rarely used): This implies that by default we won't apply a minimum stay for your listing. You won't be able to save any of the special options below. (If you already have settings saved for last-minute, orphan, or far-out bookings from our previous UI, those will continue to apply as before - we recommend turning these off if choosing "None").
   
   

2. Minimum Stay for Last Minute Bookings

You can specify a minimum night length and how many days out this should become active. In the sample below, we have set the next 7 days to have a 1-night minimum requirement for weekdays, and 2-nights for weekends - this can greatly increase the chances of getting last-minute bookings which tend to be shorter in length. You can add up to 3 last-minute min-night rules.

3. Minimum Stay for Far Out Bookings

You can specify a minimum night length and how far out this should be active. In the sample below, we have set a 5-night minimum stay for Weekdays and 7-nights for Weekends more than 180 days out. This is useful to try and fill up your calendar with longer bookings far out, and allow a regular 2 and 3-night minimum in the main booking window (depends on your location!). You can add up to 3 last min-night rules.

 

4. Minimum Stay for Orphan Bookings

You can specify that any of your minimum night rules be overridden if the default minimum nights rule is longer than an orphan gap in bookings, so a 2-night gap will not be adjusted if your default min-stay is for one night. To turn on this setting you should also have a default minimum stay rule in place so a gap length can be determined. You get a few different options in the drop-down (each of these is activated only if the min-stay setting needs to be reduced to accommodate a booking):

1. Length of Gap: For any gap of length specified in the box (in the sample below, gaps between 1 and 4 days), we will set the minimum to be the same as the length of the gap. If you are using a value-based default minimum stay, this will change the daily rates of the orphan period to meet your required booking value.
   
   
2. Length of Gap - 1 or 2: For any gap of length specified in the box (in the sample below, gaps between 1 and 4 days), we will set the minimum stay to be one or two nights shorter than the length of the gap. This is useful because it might be pretty hard to fill a 4-day gap with an exactly 4-night booking, but somewhat easier to find a 2 or 3-night booking (though it will leave a 1 or 2-day gap open). Note that 1-day gaps will stay at a 1-night minimum. If you are using a valued-based default minimum stay then the daily rates for orphan periods will be adjusted so that the shortest stay allowed meets the minimum booking value required.
   
3. Choose a number: If the value in the box is 1 (as in the sample below), then we will apply a 1-night minimum for all days in gaps between 1 and 4 days. 
   

5. Minimum Stay for Adjacent Bookings

These settings allow you to modify the minimum stays of the dates before and after bookings. It was primarily designed to allow users to take shorter bookings when they don't create a gap night. 

6. Lowest Minimum Stay Allowed

This option is like minimum price, but for minimum stays. This rule has the highest priority of all rules and does not allow the min stay to go below it (even with date-specific overrides). It can be useful to set at a listing's level for a listing that requires a higher min stay so that group customizations or DSOs do not reduce the min stay beyond what's set up here.

Creating minimum stay restrictions for specific dates/events

Like always, you can click on certain dates and override these custom settings using Date Specific Overrides. Setting a minimum night requirement here will override all of your regular rules except the orphan day minimum stay setting. If you set up a custom four-day minimum stay for certain dates, and two bookings result in a 2-day gap, we will apply the orphan day setting to ensure that you can get a booking in that gap as well. 

Once the rules have been set up, you can see the minimum night setting on the calendar at the top left of each date, and hovering over a date provides the reason the min-night was set to a certain value.

Important Note:

In order to set a minimum stay override, a listing must have a default minimum stay settings first.

Group and Account level minimum stay restrictions

You can also apply these settings for certain groups of listings or your entire account by setting these up on the Customization page (Dynamic Pricing > Customizations). Any rules you apply here will be used for all the listings in the account. If you want certain listings not to have the default rule, you can apply a special setting for those listings individually as described above.

Note: When minimum-night settings are set up at multiple levels, only the minimum-night setting of the most specific level will apply. Also, minimum-night settings are all or nothing, this means that rules from different levels can't apply together (i.e., you can't have some minimum-night customizations from one level and some from another level). A full description of the hierarchy is available here.

Hierarchy of the Customizations

From highest to lowest priority, the rules are:

1. Lowest Minimum Stay Allowed
2. Orphan Day Minimum Stay 
   
3. Date Specific Override Minimum Stay
   
4. Adjacent Day (after booking) Minimum Stay
   
5. Adjacent Day (before booking) Minimum Stay
   
6. Far out Minimum Stay
   
7. Last Minute Minimum Stay
   
8. Default Minimum Stay
   

Example - According to these rules, if the Last minute day is also an Orphan day, then the Orphan day Minimum stay restriction will apply as it has higher priority.

The Orphan Day customization is applied over everything else if it won't increase the minimum night setting on a day.

For example, suppose you have a last-min min-night of 1 within 10 days, and orphan gap rule of "length of gap" for gaps 1-3 days. For an orphan gap of 2 days in the coming week, the "length of gap" orphan rule wouldn't apply because the last-min rule of 1 is lower.

Video Tutorial 

Advanced features only available by request

There are a few settings that are only available by request. Feel free to contact our support team and ask us to enable them on your account.

• Allow Minstay Increase: You can use this feature to allow minstay increases through Orphan and Adjacent rules. Users with this customization will see a checkbox on each level of the rule that enables minstay increases.
• Don't overwrite date overrides: an option for Orphan Minstay that prevents it from reducing the minstay where there is a DSO. Users with this customization will see a checkbox that applies to all Orphan Minstay levels.
  
• Flexible range for Orphan gap minstay rules: an option for Orphan Minstay that restricts the rule to a certain booking window. Useful for users who only want to have Orphan Minstay rules last minute for example (useful in markets where cancellations are common). 

PMS specific notes

Please review the following system-specific notes before continuing: 

1. For connections to Lavanda, Lodgify, Stays, VRM, and Yield Planet, and when uploading rates using our extension, min-stays must be set in PriceLabs or sync will fail
   
2. For connections to Airbnb, Guesty, and Tokeet, PriceLabs will overwrite all minimum-night settings you might already have in place with what you have set on PriceLabs.
   
3. For connections to Beds24, you must first make sure your min-stay in Beds24 is set to 1 or none in SETTINGS->PROPERTIES-ROOMS-SETUP and/or in SETTINGS-PROPERTIES-ROOMS OFFERS or PriceLabs min-stays will not appear on the Beds24 rates tape. 
   
4. For connections to Vreasy, if a minimum night requirement is not sent from PriceLabs then all min-stay values will become 1
   
5. These features are currently not available for Kigo and Maxxton.