Would you like to know how to book your orphaned nights? Great! We’ll go over it in this post, but first let’s go over what an orphaned night is. There are a couple of other terms used for them.
We call them orphaned nights, but I’ve also seen them called orphaned days, gap days, unbookable days, orphan gaps, small gap days and booking gaps.
In short, orphans are the available days between your bookings that are less than your minimum stay.
Let’s say you have a minimum stay on your vacation rental calendar set to 5 days. That means any gaps in your calendar that are less than that number of days will not be available for someone to book.
There are a couple of ways you can get those days booked while minimizing your risks. Let’s cover what suggestions others offer and what we do with our orphaned nights.
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What Others Recommend For Orphaned Nights
There are many sites out there that recommend lowering the minimum night stay as the orphaned nights get closer.
Which we agree with… to a point.
If your minimum is 5 days and as it gets closer you lower your minimum to 3 days, that is a really good strategy.
The problem is they go so far as to recommend lowering your minimum to 1 night. That we DO NOT agree with!!
Lowering the minimum stay to 1 night opens you up to parties. If you’ve been in the VR business for a bit, you know parties are something you want to stay clear of at all costs. A vacant night is way better than a destroyed property.
What We Do With Orphaned Nights
Here’s the strategy we use for our orphaned nights. We think the best people to rent the orphaned dates to are the guests that we have already vetted.
The guests most likely to want to book those days are the guests staying before and after the orphaned dates!
Ask them if they would like to extend their stay at a discount.
We keep a 2 or 3 night minimum through the year and when there are gaps of 1 or two nights we offer them at a discount to the guests on either side of the available dates.
This strategy increases your income without adding any additional risk.
Another thing you could do is send a message to past guests offering the orphaned dates at a discount. You may have past guests interested in a short getaway at a discount. Past guests that you already had a positive experience with are also in the no risk pool in our eyes.
When To Offer The Orphaned Night Discount
We offer them the discounted nights as soon as we see them and we received everything we need from them (things like drivers license and rental agreement).
That way it gives them enough time to change flights, rearrange their schedule, get more time off from work, etc…
How Much Of A Discount?
To determine the discount we look at the rates for those dates and determine a rate that would feel like a discount compared to what is listed. It makes sense to offer them a rate that will get them to book, heck it’s all free money anyway – if they don’t book the dates then you get $0. 🙂
Now Go Out There And Book Those Orphaned Nights!
Our goal as vacation rental owners is to increase the income… but you don’t want to do that at the risk of ruining your property.
Offering the nights to the guests on either side of the gap or to past guests increase your chances of safely booking those nights.
If you’d like some other ideas on how you can increase your vacation rental income, check out this post:
Was that helpful? What do you do differently?
Are you going to try this method to fill in the small gaps in your calendar? What are you doing for the small gaps currently?
Let me know in you the comments below!!
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