Minimum stay rules determine how long guests can book your property. These rules can be customized globally or per day for weekdays and weekends, and can be combined with pricing strategies for better flexibility and revenue management.
There are a few different ways in which Minimum Stay Length can be set:
It can be Manually set on your property calendar.
It can be set via an Availability rule in your property settings.
It can be set via a Rule-set on your property calendar.
It can be set using Hospitable’s Dynamic minimum night stay tool.
It can be set by an external Dynamic pricing tool such as Wheelhouse or PriceLabs.
1. Manually editing calendar minimum stay length
You can manually edit the minimum stay length for particular dates in your calendar if you:
Go to your Hospitable account.
Select either Properties > select a property > click on Calendar or go to the main Calendar page to view all property calendars on one page.
Click on the date you wish to change twice (or, to select a series of dates, click on a start date and an end date).
If you select more than one week, we will show a day of the week selection option, with all dates selected by default. If you only want your minimum length of stay updates to apply to specific days of the week, deselect the unwanted days.
In the example shown in this screenshot, changes will only apply to weekend dates (Friday and Saturday).
Enter the value in the Minimum length of stay field.
Click Save.
Minimum stay lengths set manually will be pushed to all listings in your property.
The calendar will prefer the manual edit over any minimum stay length set by the availability rules on the property.
Note: Manual edits and dynamic pricing tool updates both write to the same calendar. The most recent update always takes priority. If you manually set a minimum stay after your pricing tool's last update, your manual value will be pushed to your listings. However, the next time your pricing tool sends an update for those dates, it will overwrite your manual edit.
2. Setting minimum stay length via availability rules
You can set minimum stay lengths on your property using the availability rules page. This is your property's default minimum stay setting. You can read more about that page here.
Minimum stay lengths set by the property’s availability settings will be applied to all dates in your calendar that have not been manually edited, or are under a rule-set that contains a minimum stay length setting.
To start configuring the minimum stay length settings for your property:
Go to Hospitable > Properties
Select the property you want to edit.
Click on the Availability page on the left-hand side menu.
On the General tab, set the Minimum stay length you want.
You can set a minimum stay length for all days of the week.
You can choose to set the minimum stay length per day of the week.
You can choose to set different minimum stay lengths per booking channel.
Setting different minimum stay lengths per booking channel cannot be done “per day of the week”.
Minimum stay lengths set by your property’s availability rules will be pushed to all listings in your property.
Your dates will no longer follow your property's default minimum stay setting, if they have been edited previously. They can be reset on the backend so that they start following the availability rules on your property again. You can contact Hospitable support and ask them to reset your minimum night stays to your property's default minimum stay settings. You can also ask Smarty, our AI bot, to do that for you.
3. Setting minimum stay length using Hospitable's rule-set
Through rule-sets, you can set the minimum stay length in two ways:
The Global setting: Setting one minimum stay length that applies to all days of the week.
Set By day of the week: Click on “Customize minimum stay by check-in day” to see the options to set minimum night stay based on the day of the week.
Rulesets can also incorporate pricing strategies, such as adding price increases for certain durations or using Length of Stay discounts to incentivize longer bookings.
You can read more about this here.
Minimum stay lengths set by the rule-set will override any other minimum stay length setting, whether that’s by a property availability rule, by manual edit or a dynamic pricing tool.
Minimum stay lengths set by a rule-set will be pushed to all listings in your property.
4. Setting minimum stay length using Hospitable’s Dynamic minimum night stay tool
When enabled, Dynamic Minimum Night Stays automatically adjusts your minimum stay settings based on booking patterns and availability gaps. You can read more about this feature here.
Dynamic Minimum Night Stays uses your settings to optimise your property's minimum stay requirements. The system automatically adjusts minimum stay requirements based on:
How far in advance dates are being booked
Gap periods between existing reservations
Your chosen settings
Manual edits to minimum stay lengths in your calendar will override those set by Hospitable’s Dynamic Minimum Night Stay tool.
If you choose to disable Dynamic Minimum Stays, your calendar will revert to your last settings before it was enabled.
Minimum stay lengths set by Hospitable’s Dynamic minimum night stay tool are pushed to all listings on your property.
5. Setting minimum stay length using an external dynamic pricing tool
You can use a Dynamic pricing tool such as Wheelhouse, PriceLabs or others to set the minimum stay length in your Hospitable calendar.
You can find the full list of dynamic pricing tools Hospitable integrates with here.
Minimum stay lengths set by a dynamic pricing tool will be pushed to all listings in your property.
The minimum stay length your dynamic pricing tool sends to Hospitable will update your calendar and be pushed to your listings. If you later make a manual edit for the same dates, that manual value will take priority, until the pricing tool sends its next update. The most recent update wins.
Minimum stay length and Booking.com child rate plans
Hospitable only syncs with one rate plan on Booking.com per listing. We call that the Parent rate plan. Other rate plans (called Child rate plans) can be set up so that they take price and availability from the parent rate plan. However, Booking.com does not sync the minimum night stay over to those. You must set that manually on Booking.com.
Log in to the Booking.com Extranet.
Verify Parent Rate Plans: Check Rates & Availability > Rate Plans and make sure that your child rate plans are "Mapped from" the parent rate plan, which should be "Mapped from Hospitable".
Manually set minimum night stay for your child rate plans:
Go to Rates & Availability > Calendar.
Tick the box that says "Restrictions".
Expand the view for your child rate plans.
Click the "Min. night stay" requirement field on the date you want to edit.
Set the minimum night stay for that date.
Repeat this for all dates you want to adjust (this can also be done in bulk by choosing a start date and an end date).
More info here: Managing Rate Plans on Booking.com
A note on setting minimum stay length on your booking platforms
Setting minimum stay length on Airbnb
When you connect your Airbnb listing to Hospitable on the Property Management Software scope (PMS scope), your calendar minimum stay length should be set and controlled on Hospitable.
Hospitable becomes the source of truth, which will control your minimum stay length on Airbnb. While you will be able to manually change the minimum stay length on Airbnb, Hospitable will override the minimum stay length set on Airbnb if it conflicts with the minimum stay length in the Hospitable calendar.
If you have connected your Airbnb listing on a limited connection, then Hospitable will not have any control over your Airbnb calendar. You will then need to set the minimum stay length directly on Airbnb, rather than in the Hospitable calendar. Hospitable will not pull in that minimum stay length from your Airbnb listing and push to your other listings!
Setting minimum stay length on Booking.com
Similar to how Airbnb works, when you connect your Booking.com listing to Hospitable, Hospitable becomes the source of truth for your calendar's minimum stay length. Minimum stay length needs to be set on Hospitable, and Hospitable will push it to Booking.com.
Unlike Airbnb, it is not possible to connect Hospitable to Booking.com on a more limited connection, which could give you access to controlling pricing on the Booking.com Extranet.
Setting minimum stay length on Vrbo
Unlike Airbnb and Booking.com, Hospitable is not the ultimate source of truth for minimum stay length on Vrbo. This will change with the upgrade to Vrbo’s Official API, which is coming soon!
Hosts can freely change their minimum stay length directly on the Vrbo calendar. This minimum stay length will only be pulled into Hospitable if Vrbo is the Lead listing on the property. It will then be pushed to the other listings on the property if you have Minimum night stay sync enabled on your Hospitable account.
Because Hospitable is not the ultimate source of truth for your calendar's minimum stay length on Vrbo, changes can be made to the minimum stay length on Vrbo after Hospitable successfully pushes the minimum stay length over to Vrbo. This will cause discrepancies between Vrbo and Hospitable, which is why we recommend that hosts only make minimum stay length changes on the Hospitable calendar.
FAQs
Why did I get a single-night / one night booking when I have a minimum night stay higher than that?
Why did I get a single-night / one night booking when I have a minimum night stay higher than that?
If the reservation is from Booking.com, then check to see which rate plan the guest booked. You can see this next to the daily rate in the reservation’s financials part of the conversation thread. These can occur because the guest booked their stay on a child rate plan, and the minimum night stay had not been manually updated on that rate plan.
For more information, see: Troubleshooting Minimum Night Stay Discrepancies Between Hospitable And Booking Platforms
Can I revert overrides made to specific dates?
Can I revert overrides made to specific dates?
Yes. How you revert depends on what you want those dates to follow:
Option 1: Manually overwrite the dates
Go to your Hospitable Calendar.
Select the affected dates.
Enter the minimum stay value you want.
Click Save.
This replaces whatever value was there before. Keep in mind that if you have a dynamic pricing tool or rule-set active on those dates, they may overwrite your change on their next periodic update.
Option 2: Reset dates to follow your property's default availability rules
If you want all the dates to follow your property's default minimum stay settings, you have two options:
Ask Smarty (our AI bot) to reset the minimum stay, or
Contact Hospitable support and ask them to reset the dates for you.
Once reset, those dates will follow whatever minimum stay is configured in Properties → [your property] → Availability → General.