Minimum Night Stays

Minimum Night Stays

We utilise minimum stay requirements to ensure Owners are getting high value bookings when demand is strong, and to attract bookings when demand is soft. This is done as a Master Rule in our booking system, which means that unfortunately they aren't able to be altered on a home-by-home basis.


Short Stays

Throughout the year, most of the demand for accommodation in the region is for weekend or single night stays and thus our 1 or 2-night minimum requirement covers approximately 300 nights per year. As a default, we offer guests 1-night stays at the same rate as 2-night stays (ie they pay for 2 nights but only stay 1 night). Owners have the option to offer 1-night stays at 80% or 60% of the 2-night rate if they would like to generate more revenue for their home. We don't take 1-night stays during School Holidays or other periods of higher demand. For more detail, please see One Night Stays.

The benefit of taking shorter bookings

Winter bookings are typically shorter stays over weekends. They attract a lower rate and are therefore less profitable (as a percentage) per booking than longer peak stays (for more detail, see Understanding Booking Earnings). There is however a strong rationale to take bookings at these times:
  1. Shoulder and off-peak stays will generate most of a home's annual gross revenue (typically around 60-70%)
  1. Taking a higher number of bookings across the year will directly improve your homes ranking in search results across the most important listing websites
  1. This in turn puts your home in a stronger position to be visible for, and attract more, of the higher value stays at peak times.

Public Holiday & Special Event Weekends

Public Holiday weekends (where a public holiday falls on a Friday or Monday) have higher demand than other weekends, and as such we can set longer stays of 3 nights (for most long weekends) or 4 nights (for Easter). The World Super Bikes event on Phillip Island creates a similar increase in demand as a Public Holiday and is treated like one for the minimum night stay requirement (for homes on/near the Island). The way this works has changed (for the benefit of Owners) and is done using a method known as Rate Forcing: 

I.e. On a Public Holiday weekend, a guest can book a 2-night stay, but the price they pay is for more than the number of nights in the booking. The benefits of this method are that your home appears in search criteria online when a guest is searching for a shorter stay (leading to more bookings), but we ensure the 'fixed' revenue of all bookings during these periods of higher demand.

For example, if you see a booking come through for the Kings Birthday weekend for 2 nights, the guest has paid the equivalent of 3 nights. For Easter (4-night minimum stay), guests can enquire and book for a 3-night stay, but they pay the same rate as 4-nights.


School Holidays

Unlike most other times of the year, there is some demand for mid-week bookings during School Holidays, but we know from ~25 years of data that over 90% of those enquiries and bookings are for 2-night stays. Therefore, to secure you as much income as possible, we do not increase the minimum night stay requirement for bookings during School Holidays.

Moto GP

The Moto GP (usually in late October each year) creates a significant spike in demand (for homes on/near the Island) for what would otherwise be a standard weekend. For the homes that this event impacts, a guest can book and stay for between 2 and 7 nights, and they pay the equivalent of 7 nights (using the Rate Forcing method explained above). Homes further afield can still attract bookings at a higher nightly rate, but without the same rate forcing in place. See Moto GP for more information.

Altering the minimum night stay

If we are closing in on a public holiday weekend, Easter, special event, etc. and your home has not yet booked, we may remove the Rate Forcing rule and allow guests to book and pay for the same number of nights. For example, this may mean that we can secure a last-minute booking for your home for a public holiday weekend, and the guest will have booked and paid for a 2-night stay.

Melbourne Cup Public Holiday

We know from experience, that the Melbourne Cup public holiday, which falls on a Tuesday, does not generate the same increased level of demand as the long weekend public holidays. As such, we have a Melbourne Cup tariff that increases the nightly rate for a stay at your home, but the minimum night stay is set as 2 nights. Approximately 10% of our homes will take 2 bookings over this period, both at the higher rate.


Anzac Day

The minimum night stay requirement for Anzac Day varies depending on whether the public holiday falls on a Friday, Monday, or mid-week. We apply different price rules for a stay when the public holiday falls on (for example) a Wednesday, because the demand is vastly different than if it falls on a Friday.

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