Revenue management, answered

What should the minimum nightly price and minimum-stay rules be for a given property?

Set your minimum nightly rate at the floor where the booking is still profitable after operating costs, not at the rate you hope to average. Minimum stays should reflect your market's booking patterns, turnover costs, and the gap days they create or prevent.

By Jack Murphy, Head of Revenue Management at UpRev. Running pricing for US vacation rental managers since 2017.

Building a Defensible Minimum Nightly Rate

Start with the property's true cost floor: cleaning, supplies, channel fees, management fees, and a proportional share of fixed costs. Any rate below that floor destroys margin regardless of occupancy. Layer in a demand-based buffer so you're not just breaking even on slow nights but still capturing value. Review this floor seasonally, since cost structures shift and so does the competitive baseline in your market.

Setting Minimum-Stay Rules That Protect Revenue

Minimum stays exist to control turnover costs and prevent orphan gaps that erode your calendar efficiency. A two-night minimum is standard for most markets on weekends, but high-turnover markets or properties with heavy cleaning costs often justify three nights. Watch your gap-night data closely: overly strict minimums create unbookable single-night gaps that bleed more revenue than a shorter stay would have cost you. Adjust minimums dynamically around peak periods and local events to protect your highest-value nights.

Coordinating Both Rules Across a Portfolio

When you manage multiple properties, minimum pricing and stay rules cannot be templated uniformly across the portfolio. A downtown condo and a rural cabin have fundamentally different cost structures, guest profiles, and booking windows. Build a property-level framework that accounts for each unit's margin floor and booking behavior, then apply consistent logic rather than consistent numbers. That discipline is what separates professional revenue management from guesswork.