The Property “Availability” page allows hosts to set the availability rules that govern their calendar availability. The page is divided into three parts, each dedicated to a different aspect of availability and booking rules.
What sections can I find on the Property Availability page?
To simplify property and calendar management, the “Availability” page is split into three key sections:
General
Booking rules
Instant book
1. The General sub-page
The General page section is where you find the following availability settings:
Minimum stay length setting:
The minimum number of nights a guest needs to book your property for.
Guests will not be able to book a shorter stay than this minimum.
This can be manually changed for individual dates in your calendar.
This is pushed out to all listings on your property.
This is not pushed to child rate plans on your Booking.com listing. See more about that here.
Maximum stay length setting:
The maximum number of nights a guest can stay at your property for.
Guests must book a shorter stay than this maximum.
The maximum stay length must be greater than the minimum stay length.
The maximum value you can set is 1125 nights.
This is pushed out to all listings on your property as a setting; this is not set per day in the calendar, but as an overall setting.
Availability window setting:
This setting controls how far in advance your guests can make bookings.
The minimum availability window setting is 1 month.
The maximum availability window setting is 24 months.
Setting your availability window to 'Dates unavailable by default' will block the entire calendar.
You will need to manually open dates in your calendar for them to become available.
The availability window is editable per booking channel.
Availability set by the availability window is pushed to all listings on the property.
🚨The calendar availability logic for cancelled dates is to look at the availability window to determine what availability should be applied to those dates. If you have selected "Unavailable by default", then the cancelled dates will be set to "unavailable" and blocked in all of your calendars. If the cancelled dates fall within the availability window, then the dates will become available after cancellation.
Parent/Child properties: If a reservation is booked on the parent property (for example) on dates that were manually blocked on the child property, and later that reservation is cancelled, the calendar of the child property will look at the Availability window set for the child property to determine whether the dates should become available or stay blocked. If the window is set to “Unavailable by default”, then the dates will remain blocked on the child property after cancelling. If the dates fall within the availability window on the child property, then they will become available after cancellation.
Manually changing the minimum stay length or date availability in your Hospitable calendar:
Manually changing the minimum stay length value in your calendar or manually blocking/unblocking dates will override the rule set on your property. Updating the rule settings later on will not update the value on dates that have been manually edited.
Examples:
You have a Minimum stay length of 3 nights in your settings, but you changed the value for the 15th of November to 4 in your Hospitable calendar. Later, you change the Minimum stay length setting to 2 nights; the 15th of November will stay at 4 nights because that is what you manually set it to.
You have an Availability window of 12 months, but you manually opened up dates in your calendar, 13 months into the future. Later, you change the Availability window to 6 months. Those dates, 13 months into the future, will remain open because you manually opened them.
2. The Booking rules sub-page
The Booking rules page section is where you find the following availability settings and rules:
Restrict check-in days:
This rule restricts the days of the week a guest can check in. This is useful, for example, if you don’t want guests checking in on a Saturday.
Restricted check-in can be set to any day of the week.
Restricted check-in is pushed to all listings on the property.
Restrict check-out days:
This rule restricts the days of the week a guest can check out on. This is useful, for example, if you don’t want guests checking out on a Saturday.
Restricted check-out can be set to any day of the week.
Restricted check-out is pushed to all listings on the property.
Preparation time setting:
This rule lets you schedule turnover time between stays by automatically blocking one or two days before and after each new reservation. To disable the feature, set the preparation time to None.
Preparation time can be set to one or two turnover nights.
Blocks made by the preparation time setting are pushed to all listings on the property.
If you manually make a date available in your calendar, later, the date before or after that one gets booked, and you have a Preparation time of one or two days set in the property’s availability rules, the date you manually edited will remain available. It will not be blocked by the Preparation time rule because you previously opened it up manually.
🚨Parent-Child Relationships and Preparation Time.
When you have a parent-child relationship set up, and one of those properties gets booked, the "Preparation Time" rule for each property will be applied to each one.
For example, if the parent property has a preparation time of one day, and the child property has a preparation time of two days, their dates will be blocked one and two days before and after the reservation, respectively.
Advance notice setting:
The advance notice setting determines the minimum lead time you need between when a booking is made and check-in. You can choose from the following options:
Same day as check-in, at the time of your choosing (until 11:00 PM)
At least 1, 2, 3, or 7 days
None
If you manually make a future date available in your calendar, the date will remain available, even when that date comes within reach of your Advance notice rule.
It will not be blocked by the Advance notice rule because you previously opened it up manually.
Allow shorter notice requests for Airbnb and Direct bookings setting:
This setting allows guests to request to book a stay with you past the advance notice setting timing. This is only available as a setting for Airbnb and Direct booking.
3. Instant book setting page
This page allows you to set your booking preferences; whether you accept instant bookings or you want to manually review booking requests before accepting them.
How should booking requests be handled?
You can choose between:
Automatically accept all: All bookings will be automatically accepted.
Automatically accept low risk: Only guests with a good profile and record on the booking channel will be automatically accepted.
Review and approve: No guests will be automatically approved; you will need to manually review and accept all requests to book.
This is editable by booking channel.
Is pushed to all listings on the property.