How to limit the date range a guest can request to book?

[David1111]

Hey fellow hosts! I'm hoping you can help me crack a calendar puzzle for my listing, which has a 30-day minimum stay. I'm finding that when guests request to check in mid-month (say, October 5th for 30 days), it completely throws off the next month's availability (like November), making it tricky to secure continuous 30-day bookings.

Ideally, I'd love to set things up so that check-ins are only possible on specific dates, like the 1st of the month (or a day before or after). I contacted 'customer support for Superhosts' about this, and their suggestion was to just block out all the other days in the month of October  – which, frankly, made no sense at all because then it would just show my listing as unavailable for the month (that whole experience with customer support was abysmal and honestly one of the most aggravating I've had in nearly 10 years of hosting but that's another post).

So does anyone know if there's actually a way to set these specific check-in date parameters? Or has anyone found a clever workaround? Any insights would be hugely appreciated!

[Marie8425]

@David1111 

I had to look Haha  On Your Calendar you can set check in and check out date.  I don't know how often mid month requests, but it doesn't hurt to add one line to your listing that says alternative requests will be considered.  Doesn't mean yes means same price just says ask I will answer yes or no at this price.

[David1111]

Thanks Marie - I see an option where you can set or restrict check-ins to certain days of the week but not where you can specify a specific date for a check in. Do you have the option to set a specific date? 

[Joan2709]

@David1111 

Hmmm...thats a tough one. Not sure many Hosts would want to do what you are suggesting, as it will severely limit your search visibility as you are only going to allow a 30 day min stay on 2 specific dates. Only guests searching to check in on those specific dates (and with a 30day min) will even see your listing appear in search results. You can restrict check-in & check-out days of the week and even add a 30day min to any date or series of dates, but don't think the system can do what you want it to do.

Let me tag @Shelley159 as she is really good with these scenarios and might have an idea?

[Shelley159]

I agree with @Joan2709 about visibility problems @David1111 

It might be a good idea to allow check-in and checkout for a number of days around the 1st of the month.

Here's how I would do it, you can change as needed:

Turn on professional hosting tools and make 2 rules:

1)  No check-in and no checkout weekdays (tick both options for all weekdays)

2) No check-in and no checkout weekends (tick both options for Friday and Saturday)

Apply these 2 rules to weekdays and weekends in turn from about the 4th to the 26th of each month. Also take your cleaning schedule into account when timing where you want to start and end the rules each month.

(You may wonder why we make separate rules for weekends and weekdays - it's just because the system doesn't allow all check-in or checkout days to be blocked in one rule).

Also, in the regular calendar's Availability tab:

1) If local regulations allow you to host shorter stays, consider lowering the minimum to be visible to more guests. A minimum stay isn't really needed if check-in and checkout days are correctly blocked, except that you'll have to keep a minimum of at least about 10 nights to prevent a booking in the rule gap (e.g. 27th to 3rd).

2) As you need time to manually apply the rules, change your Availability Window to "unavailable by default". This gives you time to apply the rules into the future on a rolling basis before you open up more future dates.

3) Perhaps add a maximum stay if you don't want multi-month bookings.

Here's a guide in case you're new to professional tools:

https://www.airbnb.co.za/help/article/2499