Gap nights are a big opportunity to juice revenue. One big thing in vacation rentals is maximizing nights booked and occupancy by filling "gap" or "hole" nights between bookings. You can do this by getting more bookings, but if you can get a guest that's already booked to add a day to their booking, that's a win/win. You can discount it deeply because there's no additional fixed costs like cleaning fees, so you get a few extra bucks and the guest gets to stay an extra day at a discount. Even if it's a big discount, that's basically found money -- there's no additional cleaning fees etc. and the marginal usage of utilities is not much for an extra night.
I do a schedule of offers at my properties with different discounts based on how close the booking is -- 15% off a week after booking, 30% off 3 weeks before arrival and 50% off 5 days before arrival. I run them automatically on triggers (using the instructions below).
If you want to do a more personalized approach, go to Reports and pull the Availability Gap Report. That shows the gaps and phone/email for the guest, and you can write personalized email offers or even reach out via phone to upsell that gap day.
Gap Night Email Offer Template
OwnerRez users can Create an Email Message Template using the text below to create their own Gap Night Email Offer Template by navigating to Settings > Messaging > Templates.
Subject:
Would you like an extra night at {PDISPNAME} for 50% off?
Body:
Hi {CFIRST},
Thank you for booking {PDISPNAME}.
I just noticed that the {BADJOPEN} your reservation is still open.
Would you like to stay an additional night for 50% off? If you are interested, please reply to this email.
Thank you for choosing {PDISPNAME}!
{MYFIRST}
Gap Night Trigger
OwnerRez has a trigger criteria for gap nights called Adjacent Available Nights. So you can target gaps of any size or specific gaps like 1 to three nights night gaps and send email templates automatically at certain points before arrival if there are gaps. Users can navigate to Settings > Messaging > Triggers to create a Gap Night Trigger.
For example, here's what you'd do for an email 5 days before arrival, for an arrival or departure gap of 1+ nights. From the Send Template drop-down list, users should select the Gap Night Email Offer Template that they have already created.
The {BADJOPEN} merge field will mention whether it's the arrival night that's open, departure night, or both.
Please note: Using this method, the guest may get 2 separate emails, 1 for the night before arrival, and a separate email for the night after departure.