I used to open up my calendar 9 months in advance. When Covid struck, I lost all my bookings, but I was able to refill dates with people travelling for essential reasons. Then things opened up last summer, but people would book, cancel, new people would rebook, then they would cancel: rinse and repeat as events got cancelled, guests got sick, work schedules changed, etc. etc. etc. The calendar was getting filled consistently, but it was wasting a lot of time.
So I cut the window to three months. That definitely improved things, but due to the constantly shifting rules around hosting tourists, it was still resulting in a lot of cancellations (and a lot of questions from potential guests about what would happen if they were to cancel). So more recently, I've cut the window down to one month or less.
Yesterday, I opened the calendar for August, and it's already fully booked. I'm thinging that I'm going to keep the booking window shorter in the future, because I'm getting booked and there's less messing around.
Has Covid changed your booking window, and if so, how's it working for you? Has it changed the type of guest you're getting?
