Minimum stay strategy: fill gaps without losing margin

Decide what your minimum stay needs to protect

Build your minimum stay strategy around booking contribution, cleaning capacity and availability for more valuable bookings, rather than applying one restriction across your calendar. Your rule should reflect what a booking leaves behind and whether your team can deliver it.

Keep three financial concepts separate:

• Revenue: what the booking generates before costs are deducted.
• Contribution: what remains after commissions and the variable and incremental costs of serving that booking.
• Profit: the result after accounting for the other costs of running the business, including fixed costs.

Selling another night can raise revenue without improving profit. A longer booking spreads departure cleaning across more occupied nights. Selling those same nights through separate short bookings can mean additional cleaning, laundry and front desk coordination.

Tip: Protect what the booking contributes, not just the occupied square on your calendar.

Do not treat length of stay as a measure of guest quality. Assess observable behaviour, compliance with booking conditions and operational feasibility. A short stay does not, by itself, signal a difficult guest.

Before keeping or relaxing a minimum, answer these three questions:

1. What observed demand supports holding these dates for a longer booking?
2. What additional costs would this booking create, and what contribution would remain?
3. Do you have enough cleaning and front desk capacity to handle the turnover reliably?

Find the gaps your restrictions make unbookable

An orphan night is a gap between bookings that current restrictions may prevent you from selling. Not every empty night qualifies. It might be blocked for maintenance or remain available for a booking that meets your rules. Start with physical inventory, not just blank calendar cells.

1. Rebuild availability for each physical unit

1. Open the unit calendar and locate confirmed bookings.
2. Identify the previous departure and the next arrival. Count available nights, not date labels: a departure date is not another occupied night for the departing guest.
3. Check maintenance blocks, owner use and other unavailable periods. Do not count them as sellable until you confirm why they are blocked.
4. Identify listings that share the same unit. Two listings for one apartment do not give you two apartments to sell.

2. Find the restriction that blocks the booking

Check the channel settings and documentation. An arrival-based minimum may depend on the guest's check-in date. A minimum applying during the stay may consider dates the booking crosses. Do not assume these work alike, or that every provider handles them the same way.

Check closed-to-arrival and closed-to-departure restrictions too. Open nights and a compatible stay length do not necessarily mean guests can arrive and leave on their chosen dates. Record which restriction affects each search before proposing a change.

Worked example: two nights in unit 402

This example is illustrative. The previous guest leaves on Friday and the next guest arrives on Sunday. Friday and Saturday nights are empty. The current minimum is three nights.

A Friday-to-Sunday search requests two nights, not three days of accommodation. If the applicable minimum requires three nights, the gap cannot accept that booking. Extending the search to Monday does not solve it: that would overlap the next confirmed booking.

3. Test what guests can actually book

Run real searches for one and two nights, testing each possible arrival within the gap. Use the relevant listing and rate plan. Record whether it appears available and any restriction displayed when it does not.

Tip: A gap visible to reception is not necessarily bookable by a guest. Verify the search before labelling it sellable or deciding which rule needs review.

Calculate what a short booking actually contributes

Before relaxing your minimum stay, calculate the booking’s contribution: accommodation revenue plus retained charges, minus commissions, variable nightly costs and incremental costs per stay. Use your actual figures, not the first total the channel displays.

C = A + R − M − V − E

C means contribution; A, accommodation revenue; R, retained charges; M, commissions; V, variable costs across all booked nights; E, incremental costs per stay.

1. Gather the inputs without double counting

1. Check the quote and channel settlement. Establish whether revenue is shown before or after commission.
2. Separate charges you keep from amounts collected for third parties.
3. Ask your housekeeping lead for the cost attributable to each turnover.
4. Classify each expense by what triggers it: an additional night or a new stay.

The cleaning fee is not the cleaning cost. Enter the retained fee under R and the actual expense under E. If you start with revenue already net of commission, do not subtract that commission again.

Assign departure laundry, turnover supplies and additional departure labour to E. Assign consumption or services that increase with each occupied night to V. Count each cost once: do not include the same laundry expense in both the nightly allowance and the departure cost. Do not allocate fixed costs arbitrarily and call them incremental.

2. Copy the comparison and enter your figures

Illustrative example: compare the same two nights in unit 402. Copy this table into your spreadsheet. Monetary inputs are blank for your actual figures; the formulas show how to calculate each contribution.

Two bookings require two turnovers instead of one. Do not assume every cost doubles: calculate each booking separately.

3. Use a realistic alternative

Accepting one night may prevent you from selling the whole gap. Assess that opportunity cost against your booking pace, without assuming a longer booking will arrive or the remaining night will sell.

Tip: Compare the contribution from selling one night with selling the whole gap. Do not treat a possible second booking as secured revenue.

Positive contribution does not automatically justify accepting the booking: check turnover capacity and any remaining gap. Contribution is not profit either. It still needs to help cover fixed costs.

Set minimums by season and arrival day

Set your rule around arrival dates and observed demand, not just the season label. An ordinary weekend, a Colombian holiday weekend and a low-demand week may need different minimums. A nearby event is not a reason to tighten restrictions across the entire calendar.

1. Group arrivals with similar booking patterns

Review comparable bookings by physical unit or accommodation type. For each group, record arrival day, booking lead time, typical stay length and the turnovers your team can handle. Nights already sold do not, by themselves, prove that enough longer-stay demand remains to justify a stricter minimum.

Check public holidays against the Colombian Government’s official calendar and confirm event dates with the organiser. Then compare those dates with your own booking pace. A holiday does not guarantee demand.

2. Turn the evidence into an operating matrix

The matrix below is illustrative. The two-night and three-night minimums demonstrate how to structure decisions, not universal recommendations. Replace them with rules supported by your booking patterns and housekeeping capacity.

3. Establish which restriction takes precedence

Document the base rule, the scope of each temporary exception and any additional arrival or departure restrictions. Check your provider’s documentation rather than assuming an exception overrides every other restriction. Confirm whether the minimum applies to the arrival date or across the stay.

For example, if you tighten Friday arrivals for an event, check what happens to a guest arriving on Thursday and staying through it. Your commercial intention and the channel’s actual behaviour must match.

Tip: Restrict the arrivals your evidence supports, not the entire week surrounding an attractive date.

4. Make the decision before scheduling

Ask: is there demand for stays of this length on these arrival dates? Does the minimum protect valuable availability, or merely block plausible bookings? Can housekeeping cover the turnovers the rule permits? Where evidence is weak, keep the rule less restrictive and assign both a review owner and a review point.

Relax restrictions near arrival without reflex discounts

Lowering the minimum does not mean lowering the rate. First decide whether the restriction blocks a booking that contributes enough and fits your operating capacity. Review price separately rather than discounting simply because a night is empty.

1. Identify a sellable gap

Confirm the physical unit’s free nights between bookings and exclude operational blocks. Identify the arrivals and stay lengths you want to accept. That is your commercial objective, not yet proof that your provider can configure it.

2. Check your own booking pace

Review how far ahead comparable bookings arrive for that season and arrival day. Keeping the minimum may make sense while you remain within your usual booking window. If that window is passing and the rule still blocks the gap, consider relaxing it.

Base your review timing on your records, not a universal deadline. Approaching arrival calls for a decision, not an automatic discount.

3. Confirm contribution and capacity

Use actual costs to check what remains after commissions, variable costs and turnover. Ask the housekeeping lead to confirm that the unit can be ready for arrival. Keep the restriction if contribution is insufficient or capacity cannot be verified.

4. Choose the exception’s scope

In an illustrative example, unit 402 has two free nights and a three-night minimum. Allowing two nights could fill the gap; accepting one could leave the other stranded. Assess every possible arrival and stay length before deciding.

A lower minimum neither imposes a maximum stay nor guarantees that only the gap will sell. Check neighbouring dates, stays crossing the modified dates and inherited restrictions against your provider’s documented behaviour. If the controls cannot deliver the scope you need, do not publish a broader exception merely because it is easier.

Consider offering an extension to a guest in an adjoining booking, without assuming acceptance or changing their confirmed reservation.

Tip: Decide what you are willing to sell first. Then establish whether the available controls respect that decision.

5. Set an expiry and verify

Use the review-sheet template to record who approves the exception and who owns its expiry. Follow the detailed publication checks in the tools section before treating the exception as live.

Reassess when the gap sells, a reservation is cancelled or demand changes. Restore the base rule where appropriate and verify the result.

Choose your rule controls and verify every channel

Choose your tool around who edits restrictions and who checks them on the next shift. Recording a decision is not the same as publishing it. Your worksheet may show the approved minimum while the booking channel still applies a different rule.

Having a channel manager does not guarantee that every restriction reaches every channel or works identically there. Check the provider’s documentation for the specific connection and restriction, not just its availability synchronization.

1. Identify the exact scope

1. Confirm the physical unit, listing and channel. Where several listings sell the same unit, check their mapping without counting them as additional inventory.
2. Identify the rate plan. Check whether it inherits restrictions or uses its own settings.
3. Specify the dates and minimum-stay type: arrival-based or stay-through. Check arrival and departure closures that could also prevent a booking.

2. Test what guests can actually book

1. Record the approved rule, its owner and intended scope before publishing it through the appropriate control.
2. Check synchronization status and rejection notices. A saved change does not establish that publication was immediate or successful.
3. Search as a guest using the intended dates, guest count and stay lengths. Compare a stay that should be accepted with one that should be rejected. Check availability and the complete quote without completing a reservation.
4. Save the check time, result and supporting evidence. If the result differs from the approved rule, mark the exception awaiting verification, not successfully published.

Tip: Hand over two separate statuses: “change recorded” and “booking availability verified on the channel.” A saved setting is not proof that a guest can book the stay.

Work two cases: sell the gap or keep the minimum

Case A: unit 402, two open nights and a three-night minimum

This case is illustrative. Unit 402 has two open nights between confirmed bookings and a three-night minimum. Your decision is not simply whether to lower the minimum. Compare the calendar and workload each option leaves behind.

Calculate each option’s contribution using your own figures: accommodation revenue plus retained charges, minus commissions, variable nightly costs and incremental costs per stay. Include actual departure cleaning costs. A retained cleaning charge is revenue, not an automatic reduction in the cleaning cost.

Do not compare a bookable two-night stay with two separate one-night sales as though both sales were guaranteed. Calculate the booking you can accept first. Assess any later sale separately. The second booking is a possibility, not committed revenue.

If you approve the two-night option, restrict the exception to the relevant unit, dates, listing and rate plan. Check physical availability before publishing. Then search as a guest for both nights, a single night and neighbouring dates. The complete quote must match your assessment, and the published scope must match the approval.

Conditional decision: allow the two-night stay only when the checks pass. Record your inputs, chosen option, approver, expiry and channel verification. Changing the minimum does not require a rate discount.

Tip: judge the calendar you will have after accepting the booking, not just the night you can sell today.

Case B: unit 305, one open night and a tight turnover

This second case is also illustrative. If you sell unit 305’s open night, that guest would check out at 10:30, with another confirmed booking arriving the same day. Front desk and the housekeeping lead need to complete this short record before opening sales.

1. Complete the record. Use actual timings. Include replenishment and inspection without counting them twice.
2. Check time against coverage. Verify that the buffer can absorb the disruptions you normally encounter. Do not assume the whole team will be available.
3. Decide before selling. Review contribution with any incremental coverage costs. Seek approval for the exception and verify it on the channel only if capacity and contribution are sufficient.

Conditional decision: if the arrival time remains unconfirmed, staffing is unresolved or no operating buffer can be verified, keep the minimum or leave the night off sale. Record a rejected exception too, including the reason and what would allow reconsideration. Do not alter confirmed bookings to accommodate a new sale.

Fix failed restrictions without passing the problem to guests

A wrongly published restriction is not a pricing problem. Identify what failed and who owns the correction before changing the rate.

1. Diagnose the symptom

1. The gap does not appear in searches: check physical availability, blocks, overlapping restrictions, arrival-based versus stay-through minimums, and closed arrival or departure dates. Check the rate plan being searched as well.
2. A one-night booking sells outside the intended scope: compare approved dates and units with what was published. Check the mapping between unit, listing and rate plan, along with the exception’s expiry.
3. A cancellation changes the calendar: reassess the entire gap. The earlier exception may no longer make sense. Do not automatically extend it to newly available nights.
4. Front desk flags an impossible turnover: confirm actual cleaning time and staff coverage with the housekeeping lead before keeping affected inventory open for new bookings.

2. Contain the discrepancy and verify the fix

Save screenshots of the search, expected restriction, visible restriction, channel, dates and review time. Name a person responsible for limiting affected new sales where necessary and resolving the discrepancy.

Check synchronization status and provider errors. Saving a rule does not prove it is live. After correcting it, repeat the guest search on the affected listing and rate plan.

If a booking is already confirmed, coordinate an operationally feasible alternative and communicate the proposal through a channel that keeps a record. Record the guest’s response and any agreement. Do not unilaterally change their booking to solve an internal mistake.

Tip: Contain the risk of further affected sales first. Changing several restrictions and prices together removes the clues you need to diagnose the failure.

3. Stop these mistakes from recurring

• One minimum everywhere: differentiate rules by demand and operating capacity.
• Automatic discounts: fix the restriction blocking the booking first.
• Ignoring cleaning: validate each turnover with the responsible team.
• Forgetting expiry: assign someone to review or remove the exception.
• Tracking occupancy alone: examine contribution and operational workload too.
• Using minimum stays to screen guest quality: assess behaviour and compliance with booking conditions, not stay length as a proxy for the guest.

Measure better selling, not just fuller calendars

Higher occupancy does not guarantee higher contribution. Measure each reporting period by service date: count the nights when accommodation was provided, even if the booking ends later. Do not assign an entire booking to its checkout month or payment date.

1. Align revenue, costs and nights

Assign nightly accommodation revenue and variable costs to the night they relate to. For retained charges, commissions and per-stay costs without a specific service night, allocate them proportionally across the booking’s nights. Include only the share belonging to nights in the reporting period. Use documented direct attribution where available. Keep the same allocation method for the baseline and test, and reconcile allocated amounts with each booking’s total.

Separate cancellations from nights actually stayed. Track operational blocks separately from marketable nights and explain inventory changes. Mark incomplete cost figures as provisional and update them before deciding.

2. Copy the measurement sheet

Fill the empty columns with your results. Below, “period” means nights measured by service date, except for the specified booking cohort.

Analyse the completed-booking cohort separately. Include every night in those bookings, including nights outside the reporting period. Use this view to compare stay length and whole-booking results, not to divide them by one month’s available nights.

3. Decide using comparable conditions

Compare similar units, seasons, weekdays and booking lead times. Record changes in rates, discounts, refunds and housekeeping coverage. A single before-and-after comparison does not establish causation.

Tip: Read occupancy, contribution per available night and turnover capacity together. Contribution is not profit.

If occupancy rises while contribution per available night falls, check discounts, commissions and additional turnovers. You may be selling more while retaining less to cover fixed costs.

• Keep the exception if contribution improves without exceeding housekeeping capacity or creating more residual gaps.
• Adjust its scope if it works only for particular days, units or stay lengths.
• Withdraw it if contribution deteriorates or turnovers become unworkable.

If comparable evidence is limited, mark the result as inconclusive. Do not turn a weak signal into a permanent rule.

Copy a review sheet for every gap exception

Keep a separate record for each exception where reception and the person managing rates can find it. Approval is not publication. Give each status its own evidence so the next shift knows what actually happened.

Blank template

Copy this table and fill it with actual operating data. Enter dates and times where relevant, not just a night count.

Illustrative references for completing the record

The unit 402 example has two open nights and a three-night minimum. Record the arrival that closes the gap and the proposed checkout before requesting an exception limited to those nights. Leave approval and publication unconfirmed until you have evidence.

The unit 305 example has one open night and a 10:30 checkout. Identify which booking that checkout belongs to. Record the previous checkout, proposed checkout and next arrival separately. Keep housekeeping capacity pending until the housekeeping lead confirms coverage and duration.

Before publishing

• Confirm physical availability, restrictions and affected arrival dates.
• Review the full quote, contribution, turnover coverage and approval.

After publishing

• Distinguish a saved change from a verified offer on the channel.
• Save search evidence and record any resulting booking separately.

At shift handover

• Assign ownership of expiry, restoration and the outstanding review.
• Identify unresolved checks, even if no booking came in.

Tip: Keep rejected exceptions too, including the reason, decision-maker and condition for reconsideration.

If housekeeping coverage is missing, record that specific reason. Mark subsequent stages not applicable, not completed. The next shift can then avoid reopening a rejected proposal without new information.

Start with a test you can review and reverse

Use the rule matrix, exception sheet and metrics from the previous sections to run a small test. You do not need another tool or a change across every unit.

1. Run the test from your existing records

1. Choose comparable units with similar demand, capacity and cleaning conditions. Do not compare a unit with operational blocks against one available throughout the period.
2. Save the starting configuration and baseline metrics. These give you a reference for interpreting results and restoring the previous settings if needed.
3. Select one exception from your matrix and complete its review sheet before applying it. Follow the controls already recorded there rather than creating a separate process.
4. Keep prices and other restrictions stable during the test. If another change becomes necessary, record what changed and why. That difference limits what the comparison can tell you.
5. Schedule the assessment around your booking volume and usual lead-time cycle. Wait for comparable completed stays, not just new reservations.

Tip: Change one thing you can identify, measure and reverse.

2. Finish the review with evidence

• Compare the earlier metrics with your saved baseline, especially contribution.
• Record remaining gaps and confirm cleaning coverage.
• Complete the channel check and outstanding follow-up in the review sheet.
• Document the next action and who owns it.

If the evidence is not sufficient for a decision, record that limitation. A fuller calendar alone is not a reason to extend the test.