We’ve just added a new feature where minimum stay requirements can be automatically reduced if they cannot be met. For example, you have a two night minimum stay set for Friday and Saturday reservations. Your room is already booked for Saturday and Sunday, which leaves a single Friday available. With this new option enabled, the system would allow the Friday night stay since it is not possible to book Friday and Saturday (since Saturday was already reserved).
Note, this only looks at availability past the requested days. This means, in the above example, that even if Thursday was available, the system would not require a two night minimum of Thursday and Friday. The system does not check to see if dates before the first requested date are available when deciding whether to reduce the minimum stay requirement. This might be something we look at expanding to in the future, but for now we are starting with just looking forward for this feature.
This feature is disabled by default. To enable it, go to Properties Tab, Rate Plans, and then edit your plan and a a rate rule. In the rate rule screen you will find the following setting, which you should set to Yes, and save changes.
A Further Example
Here we have a five night minimum stay set for all of January. This guest wants to start their reservation on January 17. Since January 20 is reserved, the maximum the guest could reserve is three nights, so the system adjusts to require a 3 night stay instead of a 5 night minimum stay.
The system does not still require the five night minimum stay even though there is space available prior to this guest’s request start date.
Have an opinion as to whether this is the right way to handle this situation? Leave a comment or email us.