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How to Enforce Minimum Night Stays
You may want to set a minimum night stay when your guests book online. It may be that you want to enforce a two night minimum for weekends or perhaps a three night minimum on holiday long weekends. This article will go through the options you have to set up the minimum days. An important thing to keep in mind, when someone makes the reservation, the validation only checks if someone books the minimum number of nights for any of the days or dates within range. It does not enforce the actual dates set. We will touch on that more when explaining how to set up different options.
There are a few places to set the minimum number of nights that someone can book. We will go through each one. You can jump to that section by clicking on the header.
Set a two minimum night stay for the whole campground.
If you want to set a two night minimum for all sites for specific days (ex. weekends) this would be the easiest option.
Go to Settings and then Rates. Make sure you allow time for ALL your rates to render on the screen before making any new edits.
Click into the Day Minimums field to drop down the days of the week.
Check any days you want to enforce the two night minimum for.
Scroll down and click the Save button before leaving the screen.
Note: Let's go through an example of how the platform enforces this option. You check to have Fridays and Saturdays have a two night minimum. If someone makes a reservation to stay at your campground and they are coming in on Thursday and checking out Saturday, they would be allowed to make the reservation since they would meet the two night minimum. The platform does not enforce someone to stay Friday and Saturday during their reservation.
Here is what a guest will see when booking online for a Friday when they do not book for two or more nights.
Your guest will see a message in red that there is a 2 Nights minimum and the day(s) of the week included. They cannot move past the Reserve Now.
Set a minimum stay for certain date ranges (such as a long holiday weekend) for the whole campground.
This next option is ideal when you want to set a minimum stay for your whole campground for special weekends or perhaps during your peak season when guests book online.
Again this option is set within the Rates section. Go to Settings and then Rates. Make sure you allow time for ALL your rates to render on the screen before making any new edits.
Click the Orange plus icon to add a new Season.
When you click to add a new Season a window will pop up.
Date range: The first field allows you to select the date range to apply this season to. Click the Calendar to select the range.
Label: Enter a name for this season. This does display to guests booking online if they try to book for fewer nights than set that hits the date range for the season.
Year Agnostic: This defaults to checked. When checked, it should apply the seasonal rules year over year. We suggest however that you uncheck this option as once you start to layer seasons, it can cause some confusion in applying the rule properly to dates. When unchecked, it uses the exact date range selected.
Enforce Minimum: Check this box to have this Season apply as a minimum nights.
Minimum: Enter the number of nights at a minimum you want someone to book online if staying any night during the date range entered.
Season Rate Fields: Skip the rates on the season unless you also want special rates to be applied across your campground during the date range entered. For more information on setting seasonal rates at the campground level, please refer to the article describing that.
This is what the season would look like when filled in to set a minimum stay for July 4th weekend:
Click the Save button and you will be brought back to the Rates screen. Be sure to allow all the rates to render on the screen before navigating away or adding another season.
Here is what a guest will see when booking online for the July 4th example when they do not book for three or more nights.
The guest goes past the Reserve Now widget and the platform will show them in red that they need to book 3 nights. Note how the Label is pulled in after the "during" word. This is good to keep in mind when deciding what you will set as the label.
Set a minimum stay only for certain site types at your campground.
This is the last option available to set a minimum stay. This option is what you would do if you want to set minimums for only certain Site Types but not others. For example, you may have Cabins, RV and Tent sites available at your campground. During peak season, you may want to set a minimum of two nights the whole season for your cabins since they are harder to turn over with cleaning. This wouldn't matter for the RV and Tent sites. In this scenario, you will want to set the minimum at the Site Type level.
For this option, go to Settings and click on Site Types. Edit the Site Type you want to add a minimum to.
Click the Orange plus icon to add a new Season.
When you click to add a new Season a window will pop up. Enter in the fields for the new season minimum.
Date range: The first field allows you to select the date range to apply this season to. Click the Calendar to select the range.
Label: Enter a name for this season. This does display to guests booking online if they try to book for fewer nights than set that hits the date range for the season.
Year Agnostic: This defaults to checked. When checked, it should apply the seasonal rules year over year. We suggest however that you uncheck this option as once you start to layer seasons, it can cause some confusion in applying the rule properly to dates. When unchecked, it uses the exact date range selected.
Enforce Minimum: Check this box to have this Season apply as a minimum nights.
Minimum: Enter the number of nights at a minimum you want someone to book online if staying any night during the date range entered.
Season Rate Fields: Skip the rates on the season unless you also want special rates to be applied for the Site Type during the date range entered. For more information on setting seasonal rates at the Site Type level, please refer to the article describing that.
Here is what a guest will see when booking online during the date range for the season when they do not book for two or more nights.
Note: A guest is allowed all the way through the process before being told about the minimum stay. The guest goes past the Reserve Now widget, can select a site or site type, add payment information and submit to place the reservation and get to the screen where it looks like the reservation will be placed. If they did not book for enough nights, they will get kicked back to the Site or Site Type selection screen with a message in red that they need to book 2 nights. Note how the Label is pulled in after the "during" word. This is good to keep in mind when deciding what you will set as the label.
Since your guest will be allowed all the way through the process and then be told about the minimum stay, it is good to publish your rules on your website for reference. Also to note, if allowing to book by site, when a guest gets pushed back, even if the guest changes the dates they will stay to meet the minimum stay, that site will not be available for around 15 minutes until it is released. We do have a request to improve this as the site should still be available to them.
Enforce minimum stay rules internally.
You may also enforce these rules for reservations made in office by checking the option to enforce them.
Go to your Settings and click into Reservations. Check the option to "Enforce Night Minimums for employees."
Most campgrounds will not select this so they can make exceptions as needed to fill in their campground.
Please reach out to us at [email protected] if you have any questions or would like to review your options. We are here to help!