Advice for Managing 30 Day minimum rental?

[Mina1055]

Hello, everyone!
I could use some advice for managing 30-day minimum rentals.

We have set out price to just cover the mortgage, and so far we’ve been able to find tenants that agree to that price.

However, we will sometimes receive booking inquiries for 1, 2, or even 3 weeks out from the end date of the previous tenant. Since our HOA requires 30 days minimum, we cannot fill those weeks with another tenant, which would mean thousands in lost income.

It appears that declining a request reflects negatively on the platform, so we were curious if anyone could provide some advice for how to manage this situation.

Thank you!

[Fred13 · Accepted solution]

Pre-block every other 30-day span to 'force' new bookings to be at least 30 days and not step in another 30-day block,  then every time one is booked, open the one adjacent to it.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Mina1055 or a different  idea than @Fred13 s  (I think better!!)

Allow the first 30 day booking and then use a ruleset for the time from the end of the booking plus 3 days (or so) going forward 30 days and stop any check ins happening for that 30 day period. People will then have a 3 day (or so) window to check in for the next 30 days.

To access rulesets switch on pro tools in your account.

[Fred13]

That works too, I am more a fan of the 'manual', old-school approach.

We been doing this somewhat for years: have 5-day openings in between 5-day closures; why 5 days? - 50% of the guests book for 4 days the minimum (not 5) and those shorter bookings allow us the extra day for deep cleaning (24 + 4 hrs) vs 4 hrs when reservations are back-to-back.  This is how we usually reached 340/365 days filled, though nowadays we are happier with less than 300.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Fred13 Of course you do have the advantage that demand for your island seems to exceed supply so not opening all the dates at any one time is unlikely to lose you business. Oh for a tropical island......