Setting a maximum gap between bookings

[Michelle0]

I only rent on a monthly basis and would like to either A) Set a maximum gap between bookings or B) Require bookings start on the 1st of the month and end on the last of the month. The latter doesn't seem to work well because it doesn't work with airbnb's search settings. But either way I need to do one of the 2. It seems that every other month I get a booking with 3 weeks gap between the check-out of the prior guest and check-in if the arriving guest. Then the arriving guest only stays 1 month. So I effectively earn ~50% of the monthly price by taking that booking with a gap. Due to local law I cannot rent for periods of less than 30 days, so setting shorter minimums is not an option.

[Emiel1]

@Michelle0 

IMO It is not possible, as your wish will need the use of "if x then y" conditions, while setting up booking rules is a static system.

Some thoughts:

- Airbnb must change the "preparation time" in a way each desired number of nights can be set (now maximum = 3),  then each reservation will have the 21 nights gap before and after.

- Create a ruleset with min and max. stay is 30 nights and apply the ruleset on subsequent time periods of 51 nights, starting on first of the month. Then within that timeperiod only 1 booking of 30 nights can be made, but remaning "un-bookable" nights can be vary from max. 21 before to max. 21 nights after the booking or any combination making the total of it (for example 10 before, 11 after)  !. It can be limited a bit more to weekly blocks by also put in 1(!) possible check-in day (choose day which is first of the month....) in the ruleset. So then still a total of 21 nights is "unbookable", but divided in 7, 14, or 21 nights left before or after each reservation.

Very complicated and still not just what you want, but at least one 30 night booking can be made in a 51 night time period and if you are lucky starting on the first day of the month (otherwise on the 7th,14th or 21th day of the month).

- Or just block manual the dates in the calender manually after each reservation...

[Jason114]

Hi @Michelle0 , this might be somewhat tedious but it could work... You can create Rule Sets that can enforce check-in/check-out on specific days of the week along with minimum nights requirements. For every month, on each day you can set a rule that disallows check-in on every day of the month except for the first day.

To do this, select a listing and select to view its calendar. From there select any day on the calendar for a menu to pop up. Under rule sets, select add a rule set. Under Availability select checkin and checkout days and select all the days of the week and give the rule set a name. Now that you have a new rule set, you can set this for all the days of the month except for the first of the month.

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

[Josh55]

Jason I liked this idea, but when I tried it Airbnb doesnt let me disallow all 7 days of the week (only max 6) for check-in or check-out.

What I tried next, I believe worked, but I'm surprised I haven't seen others do this so I'm worried I might have it wrong.

Please let me know what you think...

My listing is set to a minimum stay of 30 days and max of 90 days.

I open/make available 3 months from the day my previous booking ends. That first 7 days after my previous booking I don't touch. But for the 8th day through the 90th I create a rule set that the minimum stay is 89 days (which is impossible because there's only 90 days available from the 1st day after my previous booking). Therefore, someone can only book/check-in within the first 7 days after my previous booking and book a stay from 30 to 90 days. If it doesn't book, I will go in and remove that rule set from day 7 to 14 thereby allowing people to book/check-in  that week through the end of my available calendar. 

Its a little risky because it basically only makes your calendar available if someone wants to check-in the first week after your last booking but it should stop big unbookable gaps. If I was okay with up to a 2 week gap I could leave the rule set off day 1 to 14 after my last booking. 

Does that make sense? Should that theoretically work? Will that kill my standings in search results?

[Michelle0]

Thanks! Yeah enforcing check-in on one single day won’t work because my search results would drop *significantly*.  I’ve tried this in the past and went from 1-2 requests a day to *crickets*. But my current scenario of declining 90% of booking requests is also really bad for SEO.. and of course including it in the description is wholly ineffective. 

blocking dates definitely won’t work.. I get 3-6 month bookings.  often. 

Blurgh. This really needs to be a feature. It’s frustrating for us and potential guests!

[Nathalie-Et-Gilles0]

For solution B, you can turn off the last day of each month + set 29 nights (which means 30 days) as minimum number of nights.

But you won’t be able to receive requests for stays longer than 30 days.

[Melodie-And-John0]

@Michelle0 ,   It would seem your bordering on being an LTR not a typical STR, your more like a landlord than a host in many ways and being tied to the 1st of the month as a term will immediately cut your world traveler prospects.  Airbnb might not be a perfect platform for that type of rental due to its cookie cutter solutions that automate most of their policies and procedures in ways that are predictable but not perfectly contourable. 

I tried to look at your listing but somehow couldn't view it, maybe the bulk of your 30 days min explanation should be in the listing description so nobody even bothers to ask therefor you don't have to turn them down.   If you can become less worried about the 1st being the start, you should be able to set your min to 30 days, your max to 180 or more and put a covid clean out break between bookings to give you a natural separation between bookings . Otherwise I think your choices are limited.  Stay well, JR

[Michelle0]

I have currently 60 mid-term listings. They’re all listed under Airbnb’s monthly stays tab. Airbnb is trying to break into this space but not being able to set a maximum gap is hurting a lot! Unfortunately they’re the only one covering the space in the United States. My European properties are mostly listed under other platforms specifically  because of this.

[Kasey6]

.

[Sean243]

Did you ever get this figured out?

Thanks

Sean

[Eric5541]

I'm in the same boat, I want to rent out my main house for less than 6 months (or even less for the first time I do it to see if I like it) and let people book in 1 month increments sequentially so I don't have gaps while I'm traveling with my family. I also want to book the first few months way out so people can see it, then open up the remaining months if all goes well as my trip gets closer. The only long pole in the tent for hosts will be allowing time to clean between listings but I'm sure I can figure something out. 

I feel like as the workforce becomes more remote,  more people are going to want to roam rather than be stuck at home forever, so why not rent out your property in cities that don't allow STRs under 30 days (Manhattan beach,  CA) and reading the city councils meeting minutes about the topic everyone in MB hates STRs. I know Airbnb wants to beat that to allow STRs but people here treat it like the plague. So let's make 30 day min bookings easier a get some small wins and listings going. 

As soon as you put in dates or try to find "month" bookings, the filters just sift out so much potential even if I select all the months in the year by name. I was racking my brain on this last night pretending to be an end user looking for monthly+ rentals in my city before I ran into your thread about the booking gaps tonight. 

Feature enhancement ask to Airbnb web team- At least make it easier to find who's house  is available for 30+= days anytime in the year in my city for some duration thereof. To @Michelle0 's point about the filters and SEO trying to find 30 day blocks throughout the year is terrible for end users unless you come in from Google on the city boundary (since the city doesn't legally have any STRs) and don't type anything, then it lists the properties potentially and and end user would then have to open each property in a new tab and view the calendar. I'm not claiming to be a web expert, but I am in the IT field and highly support customer usability and experiences and know when something is wierd, and my experience was weird. 

Writeup-

Workaround- go to the map for a city with no STRs and don't put in dates and search. You get 300+ results, all of which rent monthly or greater. 

 

Issue/bug- as soon as you add dates to any search or map view search and specify "monthly" and "I'm flexible" and select all 12 months of the year, you get 1 result (not hundreds) 

1 results bug-

 

Hoping this gets fixed, I want to rent this place out and stay in Hawaii possibly for a few months!

[Kasey6]

Hi Eric, I'm running into a similar, max gap issue on my MTR's.  Have you found a solution?

Kasey

[Tobi7]

+1

This would be a really great enhancement, especially since Airbnb is trying to break into mid- to long-term rentals and ultimately the guest experience suffers as I'm pricing in potential gaps into the Airbnb rate when I don't for other platforms/direct.

You can somewhat achieve this by using a combination of booking rules for minimum length of stay for specific dates (the 30 nights after an existing booking) in combination with staggered pricing (low rates the days after a booking and extremely high rates the last of the 30 days, so it becomes uneconomical for someone to book the gap stay (since they'll have more of the really expensive days in "their" 30 days vs. a lot cheaper for someone who searches for 30 days that include those first extremely cheap nights.

But… I have *one* rental and this barely works and I can hardly keep an overview of this strategy, I can't imagine doing this for 60 properties.