Learn how gap night settings work in Hostaway and how they can help fill short availability gaps between reservations.
What Are Gap Nights?
- Gap Nights are the small gaps of time between bookings that can sometimes go unfilled
- With the Gap Nights feature, you can configure your account to automatically allow shorter stays to fill these gaps, ensuring that no potential booking opportunities are missed
- By setting a minimum number of nights for gap reservations, you can optimize your booking calendar and reduce empty nights between stays.
Setting Up Gap Nights for Your Listings
To optimize your booking schedule and fill in gaps between reservations, you can use the Gap Nights feature.
Access the Gap Nights Settings
Follow these steps to configure Gap Nights for your listings:
- Go to your Hostaway Dashboard > Listings
- Select a listing and click on Edit
- Go to the Booking Settings for the listing you want to update
- Look for the Gap Nights section
- Configure Your Gap Nights Preferences
- In the Gap Nights settings, you'll find the following options:
- Smallest Allowed Gap: Set the minimum number of nights you'd be willing to accept for a reservation to fill in gaps between existing bookings. For example, if you want to allow only bookings of 2 nights or more to fill in a gap, set this to "2."
- Allow Gaps Between: This setting defines how many days into the future the Gap Nights rules will apply. For instance, if you set this to "14," the feature will only look for gap-filling opportunities within the next 14 days.
- Apply Settings to Multiple Listings. If you manage several listings, you can quickly apply the same Gap Nights settings to others:
- Click the Copy Settings button near the Booking Settings title
- Select the listings you want to apply the settings to by checking the corresponding checkboxes.
- Save Your Settings. Make sure to save your changes to ensure your Gap Nights settings are applied.
How it works
Once this feature is enabled, Hostaway will automatically update the minimum nights on the day of arrival for dates that fall within the range of days you have selected, if there is an available gap that is less than the current minimum night length of stay settings for that listing.
Examples
All listings have the following settings:
- Length of stay minimum nights: 4
- Gap nights: Enabled
- Smallest allowed gap: 2
- Allow gaps between: 1 and 60 days out
- The current date for this examples is the 20th of January
Case 1
The minimum nights for the 31st of January and the 1st of February are set to 2.
This is because:
- The dates fall within the allowed gap date range
- The gap is less than the listing’s minimum number of nights (which was 4)
- It’s set to 2 because that’s what the smallest allowed gap is set to
Case 2
The minimum nights from the 6th of February till the 10th are set to 4.
This is because the gap is equal or more to the listing’s minimum nights (which was 4)
Case 3
Cross-listing
- The first child has the minimum number of nights reduced to four because:
- The dates fall within the allowed gap date range
- The gap is less than the listing’s minimum number of nights (which was 4)
- It’s set to 2 because that’s what the smallest allowed gap is set to
- The parent has the minimum nights reduced to 2 because:
- The dates fall within the permitted gap date range
- The gap is less than the listing’s minimum number of nights (which was 4)
- It’s set to 2 because that’s what the smallest allowed gap is set to
- The second child retains its original minimum night settings because:
- There is no gap in its calendar
Case 4
The minimum nights remain 4, because:
- The gap is only for one sub-unit
- There are still available sub-units
- The gap nights will only apply for multi-unit listings if all units have a gap
Case 5 (Cancelled reservation)
If a reservation gets canceled and you don’t have a “gap” in your calendar anymore, our system will default the minimum nights during the gap back to the minimum settings of your listing.
What happens to my manually overridden settings?
- You can manually change the minimum nights on the calendar like you always have.
- Our system will remember that you have manually overridden
- Additionally, if you make any manual changes to the calendar, we will automatically disable the gap night settings for those dates on that listing
If you don’t want to have to deal with the manual changes of minimum nights on your calendar, you can go ahead and re-enable the feature by selecting the dates where you have manually overridden the minimum night settings and enabling the “gap night reservations enabled " switch.