Help your properties capture the rising demand for longer stays on our platform
14-Oct-2020
Takeaway
- Millions of guests are searching for stays longer than a week on our platform.
- Guests are looking for extended getaways at all kinds of properties, not just vacation rentals or holiday homes.
- There’s significant year-on-year growth in the share of room-nights booked on our platform for weekly and monthly stays.
According to our search data, travellers are increasingly seeking out properties on our platform that offer longer stays and include work-friendly facilities. This rise in long-stay demand offers your properties an opportunity to secure revenue from travellers such as domestic vacationers, families, remote workers and expatriates.
We want to help your properties attract these guests with discounted weekly and monthly rates. Adding these rates helps properties be seen by more guests who are looking to stay longer. Setting attractive prices also helps to make properties more competitive and drive more bookings. Longer stays also mean a more stable and predictable cash flow, fewer guests to check in and less operational hassle.
What are long stays?
We consider reservations of seven or more nights ‘long stays’. We recently introduced two new pre-configured ‘long stay’ rate plans on the extranet to make it easier for property partners to capture demand for long stays:
- Weekly rates: a discounted per-night rate requiring a minimum stay of seven nights
- Monthly rates: a further reduced per-night rate for stays of 28 nights or longer
Our analysis showed us that in order to have the most appealing offering for long-stay guests, properties need to reduce the standard per-night rate by 14-15% for weekly stays and by 27-30% for monthly stays. Help your properties benefit from the increased demand in long stays by encouraging them to activate these targeted rates on our channel.
What’s the best way for your properties to set up these rates?
The answer depends on which pricing model they use and how they manage their rate plans on our channel.
How properties currently set up rates on Tripeden.com | What they can do to attract long-stay guests | How you can help |
Length of Stay (LOS) pricing model* | Send us prices for stays longer than seven nights (for weekly rates) and 28 nights (for monthly rates) | Encourage properties to make sure their discounted rates stay competitive |
Directly on your platform (via the Room & Rate Plan Management API) | Create a new rate plan, specify the discount value and add an appropriate minimum length of stay restriction (MLOS = 7 for a weekly rate, and MLOS = 28 for a monthly rate) | Encourage properties to add these weekly and monthly rate plans as part of their overall revenue strategy |
Via the extranet | Add the preconfigured weekly and monthly rates from the Rates & Availability section of the extranet. These rates will be created as ‘child’ XML-res rates, with the possibility of mapping reservations to them on your channel manager. Alternatively, properties can also set these up as completely new rate plans, in which case they would be created as ‘XML default’ rates, with the possibility of mapping reservations and prices to them on your channel manager. | Remind properties to always map these new rates back to your system to minimise any potential discrepancies in prices or reservations |
*Note: Properties on the LOS pricing model can’t add rate plans via the extranet.
In any scenario, properties can choose how large a discount they want to provide, which rooms they want to apply the rates to and for how long these rate plans are active.
Properties should always consider these new rate plans in connection to their overall pricing and revenue strategy. This is because discounts included with other deals and promotions will be added to any base discount provided for these long-stay rates. Weekly rates can be used throughout the year to maximise occupancy, whereas the monthly rates may have more of a seasonal aspect to them. It’s important to keep adapting these rates over time, because the correct discount may not be the same every day.
Find out what else long-stay guests look for in a property.