With PriceLabs you can set up rules for applying default minimum night requirements, and apply special minimum night rules for last-minute bookings, for orphan-day bookings, and for far-out bookings. Before we get started users should know that Minimum Night Restrictions are advanced features that control how long a booking you require on certain dates. These settings should be used with a knowledge of your market, and the kind of bookings you want to get. 

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

Once you toggle on the "Minimum Stay Update" option, a larger menu will open up.

Here's how you can use the four options available:

1. Minimum Stay Update: This setting needs to be turned ON for any of the other minimum-stay options to work. Once you turn this on, the drop-down has three options:
   
   • None: This implies that by default we won't apply a minimum stay for all listings. Any of the next four options can still be used.
     
   • Fixed: 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.
     
   • Booking Value: If the value in the box is 300 (currency same as that of the listing), then we will calculate a minimum stay for each date such that a booking with value less than 300 is not possible. As an example, if the prices for 5 consecutive dates between 2 bookings is (100, 100, 150, 200, 200), then the minimum nights for those dates will be (3, 3, 3, 2, 2).
     
2. Minimum Stay for Last Minute Bookings: You can specify a minimum nights length and specify how many days out this should become active. In the image above, we have set the next 7 days to have a 1-night minimum requirement - this can greatly increase the chances of getting last minute bookings which tend to be shorter in length.
   
3. Minimum Stay for Far Out Bookings: You can specify a minimum nights length and how far out this should be active for. In the example above, we have set a 4-night minimum stay more than 180 days out. This is useful to try and fill up your calendar with longer bookings far out, and allowing regular 2-night minimum in the main booking window (depends on your location!)
   
4. Minimum Stay for Super Far Out Bookings: This option gives you another level with which to extend your minimum stay requirement to require even longer stays if a guest is booking well in advance. Here we've set a min-stay of 7 nights beyond 300 days, but do keep in mind the average trip length for your market/listing.  
   
5. Minimum Stay for Orphan Bookings: You can specify that any of the above minimum nights 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):
   
   • Length of Gap: For any gap of length specified in the box (in the example above, gaps between 1 and 3 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.
     
   • (Length of Gap - 1): For any gap of length specified in the box (in the example above, gaps between 1 and 4 days), we will set the minimum stay to be one night 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 3-night booking (though it will leave a 1-day gap open). Note that 1-day gaps will stay at 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. 
     
   • Choose a number: If the value in the box is 1 (as in the example), then we will apply a 1-night minimum for all days in gaps between 1 and 3 days. 
     

Once the rules have been setup, 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 You can also use the "Download CSV" link at the lower right corner to see all the settings at a glance in Excel.