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Improve Room Availability Calendar On Book Now Page

Debbie
The most important call-to-action page for owners is the "Book Now" Page. Clients want to know immediate availability without having to guess which days are still available.
 
Other booking platform providers instantly grey out dates that are sold out on the check-in-check-out calendar to avoid guesswork for guests and allow quick book-through.  
 
We noticed that with Hostaway, even for fully booked dates, they still show available and are not greyed out.
 
I’ve compared another competitor's website, their backend system can show dates that still have availability and black out dates to avoid guesswork for guests who want to book.
 
For Hostaway, our calendar shows that the date is still available when it’s already sold out. Can Hostaway update its check-in/check-out calendar and grey sold-out/booked dates to make it easier for clients to book? 
 
2

Comments

9 comments

Date Votes
  • Kristie

    Absolutely agree this is very frustrating for guests trying to book which in turn then lengthy emails have to happen back and forth about actual availability. Please can this be improved/updated

    0
  • Lucas

    I am new to the platform, and guests are already having problems with it. 

    What was hard for Hostaway support to understand is that the calendar for a specific listing does have this feature, but it needs to apply to the main calendar that searches for all listings under the same booking engine/website, which I will call "Main Calendar".

    My suggestion would be:

    - If there is a rule to all listings (such as "no check in on Sundays"), it should be shown as a block in the Main Calendar;
    - If there is a date that has no listings available, it should not be available to search in the main calendar;
    - If there is a date that is available in at least one property, it should be available in the Main Calendar.

    A trickier decision would be for a longer period where there is no listing available for the whole period, but there are listings available for parts of it. My suggestion would be to show the option to stay a few days in each.

    2
  • Lucas

    In the last two weeks, I have received direct messages of at least 10 end customers that had a problem with this calendar limitation. They say that "the website has a problem that I can't find anything on my searches".

    What worries me the most are not these customers, but the ones that could have had the same issue, and that just decided to go book another property.

    It is a issue that affects every Hostaway user, and we need an answer to this, as well as a date to have it solved.

    @Hostaway can someone answer us here, please?

    1
  • Kristie

    @Hostaway I totally agree with Lucas. Can this please be escalated? 

    0
  • Hans

    Our short term rentals are really booked out and now guest find themselves trying to guess which dates are available, it is really frustrating. Please add this feature Hostaway, which by the way, it is a feature that most sites like AIRBNB and VRBO already use. 

    0
  • Hans

    Dear Hostaway Team,

    Several of us hosts would love to have our main website display blocked dates when guests search for available nights. For properties like mine, which are frequently fully booked, guests often have to guess which dates might be available. Most major booking platforms like Airbnb and VRBO highlight available nights directly on the calendar, making the search process much more efficient.

    Currently, this feature is only available on the "All Listings" page, which requires guests to check each listing individually—a time-consuming and inefficient process.

    I hope this can be addressed, as businesses like ours, which receive high volumes of bookings, would greatly benefit from this improvement. As shown in the attached screenshot, guests can select any date, only to see "no results" because our villas are so booked. It would be incredibly helpful if the calendar immediately displayed available dates, eliminating the guesswork for potential guests.

    Thank you for considering this enhancement!

    0
  • Lucas

    That is indeed a big issue, I am seeing an average of 75% of people leaving my website after choosing dates - and not checking or finding any property available.

     

    However it seems this change is more complex and is not prioritized, and they don't have an expectation for it to be done.

     

    I would say that losing 75% of people already looking for properties would be more important than AI (which was informed as the focus of the new investments), but I hope we are able to prioritize it.

    0
  • Hans

    I could not agree more. After speaking to them, they only chose the most commented threads to have their team work on. So if we know any more hosts that are having this issues to chip in and comment on this thread that would incentivize them to make the change. 

    This doesn't seem to be a hard feature to change, but it is very much needed. 

    0
  • Lucas

    Indeed. I would imagine bigger property managers (with a lot of properties) would not realize the impact this specific thing has overall.

    0

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