Experience the difference of "Elite".

Getting Started

Core Concepts

Overview

Bookings & Quotes

Damage Protection

Data Management

Deposits

Email Template Library

Fields

Guests

Integrations

Listing Site Integration

Messaging

My Account

Payment Processing

Privacy & Security

Properties

Property Management

Quotes

Rates

Renter Agreements

Reporting

Reviews

Rules

Security Deposits

Suppressed Email Addresses

Tags

Taxes

Team Access

Technical Stuff

Travel Insurance

Triggers

Verified Email Domains

Channel Management

Channel Management

API Integrations

Calendar Import/Export

Channel Bridge

Integrations

OwnerRez APIs

Payment Processing

Testing

Websites

Change Log

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

Staff Reference

Rates - Gap Management

Most vacation rental property owners do not want to operate their business like a hotel, where guests stay one night, and there's a new guest the next day.  Generally, you want a minimum stay of 2 or 3 nights, and potentially longer during holidays and high seasons.  Some owners have minimum stays of a whole week.  This can be set in the Rules for each property, or in a Season:

Property Rules:

Seasons:

It's pretty obvious what the first three lines are for - minimum nights required for a booking in the various cases.  What's the gap nights for, though?

Leaving Money on the Table

Consider a property with a 1-week (7-night) stay requirement.  It's easy to imagine a booking that looks like this:

We see that this booking, in blue, is 8 nights - no problem.  There's another booking that ends 2 days before, leaving one empty night in between - no big deal.

But then, there's another booking that checks in on the following Saturday.  That leaves 4 empty nights in between.  That's less than the 7 night minimum, so the booking engine will not allow anyone to book those days.  The property will just sit empty.

Seems like a shame, doesn't it?  Too long to not care, but too short to fit in the rules.

Filling Up The Gaps

That is what "Minimum Gap Nights" is intended to address.  You can set a special absolute minimum booking length, that will only be applied inside of a gap that would otherwise be too short to allow a booking at all.

So, what would happen in our example with a Minimum Gap Nights setting of 2?

The gap from Jan 13-14 is only one night, so no booking would be allowed there even though it's a gap.

But now, the gap from Jan 22-26 is bookable, because it is longer than the Min Gap Nights of 2!  The booking engine, for just these dates, will shorten the required minimum stay length to the size of the gap - in this case, 4 nights.  A guest would be allowed to make a Jan 22-26 because it's in a gap, when otherwise that would not have been allowed because it's too short.  Found money!

Notes

Don't forget that the Seasons settings can override the Property Rules settings, in either direction.  So you can have a general Min Gap Nights setting of 4 in your Property Rules, a Min Gap Nights setting of 6 in your High Season when you don't want short bookings at all, and a Min Gap Nights setting of 1 in your Off Season when you'll take anything you can get.