Unit 3 · Creating Your Pricing Strategy · Lesson 3.14
Seasonal minimum stays
Seasonal minimum stays are a separate layer of rules on top of your default minimum stays, applied to specific dates where guests book longer than average. The length of stay by stay date graph in your market dashboard shows where those dates are; where longer stays dominate, a stricter minimum keeps the calendar free of gaps that longer bookings would otherwise have filled.
The full lesson text below is an edited transcript of the video, published 2026-08-24. The complete course is free at the playbook.
A second layer of stay rules
Seasonal minimum stay restrictions are a separate set of rules from the variable stay rules you have already defined. They apply to specific dates or periods where guests book longer than average stays, and those periods may or may not line up with your seasonal pricing dates, which is why they get their own analysis rather than inheriting the pricing calendar.
The goal is to maximise your potential occupancy on the dates that show increased length of stay, by applying rules that are either in line with your current strictest rules or stricter still, period by period, as the market trends justify. Done well, this keeps the calendar free of unnecessary gaps that the longer stays would have filled easily.
Reading the length of stay graph
The data lives in the length of stay by stay date graph in your market dashboard, the market-level view a dynamic pricing tool such as PriceLabs provides. Before reading it, make sure your comp set is loaded, so the graph describes the listings you actually compete with rather than the whole market.
Set the date range to run from one year before the current date through today. A full year of history captures every season once, and how stay lengths segmented over the past year is a reasonable guide to how they will segment over the year ahead. The graph stacks each stay date’s bookings by length of stay, so the periods that attract five-night and longer stays stand out at a glance.
A worked example
In the example market, stays of five nights or more made up a small share of bookings across most of the year. The strictest default rule already in place was a three-night minimum beyond a six-month booking window, so the live question was narrow: hold three nights across the high-stay periods regardless of the window, or push to four where demand justified it.
The holiday period stood out first. From December 22 through January 5, the majority of stays ran at the longer lengths or more. With January 5 falling on a Friday in that calendar, the end date moved one day to the 6th so the rule covered the full final weekend. The requirement was set at four nights, the stricter of the two stay lengths dominating the period, on the strength of the holiday demand. A mid-February stretch, the 16th through the 20th, showed the same pattern and took the same four-night rule.
The completed analysis produced four date ranges in the strategy sheet: the Christmas-to-New-Year holidays and the February window at four-night minimums, and two longer stretches, May through October and November up to Thanksgiving, at three nights. Three fit those periods because the majority of bookings were that length or longer; four was not worth the risk, because occupancy there was noticeably weaker than over Christmas and New Year.
Your own graph may show more prominent demand for five-night or even longer stays. Where the data suggests that potential, do not be afraid to set stricter requirements: the point of the exercise is to let the market’s actual stay lengths set the rule, not habit.
Two points to consider
First, not every market shows meaningful differences in length of stay across the year. If no dates feature prominently longer stays than the rest of the calendar, the default rules you defined earlier already suffice for the entire year, and no seasonal layer is needed. An empty result from this analysis is a finding, not a failure.
Second, more relaxed restrictions still let you capture longer stays, provided the dates are still available when the longer-stay guest searches: a five-night guest can book a three-night-minimum listing, but not the other way around. If occupancy is an immediate concern, staying relaxed may be the better option, because tighter restrictions carry real risk: they can turn away bookings you would otherwise have taken.