@Kate-And-Reid0 - You can adjust your calendar for all the things you've just mentioned you need already. If you want minimum stays on the weekends, you need to set up requirements for the weekends the way you want them. If you don't want to take reservations so far in advance, turn off your calendar to reservations more than 3 or 6 months out. You cannot cancel guests because you have a change in plans. If there are extenuating circumstances, you can apply for this exception, but as for renovations and family visits, it doesn't cover this.
Also, a holiday stay for you in Lake Tahoe is not the same for a host like me in Durham, so there isn't a way to just "make" holidays more expensive. You need to manage your calendar and pricing yourself. I would suggest turning on Smart Pricing and setting your limits appropriately as this will help. Addtionally, you can set seasonal pricing. If you use the calendar to allow all future dates, you can set up seasonal prices for many years ahead, but if you aren't sure about family coming for a visit and the potential that the space will be booked, I wouldn't suggest this.
Finally, imagine the guest who has picked your place, paid in full at booking, has made arrangements for flights, applied for Vacations Visas, has planned for their kids to be off school, their dog to be boarded, and for someone to come in and water the plants all 6 months in advance only to have you cancel their stay because your brother-in-law wants to come for a visit. You've just ruined that guest's vacation and they will now need to scramble to find other accommodations - if they can in the area which might be exactly why they booked so far in advance. This is why you are punished for cancelling by Airbnb because it isn't cool to do that to someone.
Personally, I love Instant Book. It makes my life so much easier and we take bookings a year in advance too. We've had to make sacrifices and said no to family who wanted to come because we were already booked by paying guests. We remind them that we are running a business and need to treat our paying clients with the respect that comes from being a small business owner.
If you need more assistance understanding how to set up your calendar and calendar constraints, most of the answers can be found in the Help Center or here in the Forums. The Tips and Tutorials section has many help documents that take you step by step. Also, if you search here in the forums, these same issues have been addressed many times and you can find gobs of threads about how to set up seasonal pricing, 3-day weekends, or holiday increases. Hopefully you'll find all you're looking for so you can feel more successful in managing your business and less let down by Airbnb.
