Length-of-stay discount
A reduction applied for longer bookings — worth it only when the nights it buys would genuinely not have sold separately.
Weekly and monthly discounts trade rate for certainty. You accept less per night in exchange for filling a block of the calendar in one transaction, with one turnover instead of several.
The economics are real when the alternative was empty nights: one turnover instead of three saves genuine cost, and a filled shoulder-season week beats a scattered one. They are poor when the discounted block swallows dates that would have sold at full rate anyway — a 20% monthly discount that happens to span your best weekend of the year is expensive.
Discounts are also almost never revisited. Operators set 15% weekly and 30% monthly during their first week of hosting and leave them untouched through years of changing demand, which means the discount is being applied hardest precisely when the market is strongest.
The sharper version of the question is not whether to offer a discount but when to withdraw it. A weekly discount earns its keep through a soft shoulder season and costs real money across a peak month, so the useful pattern is seasonal: generous when the alternative is empty nights, absent when the calendar would have filled at full rate regardless.
Where it goes wrong
Stacking a length-of-stay discount on top of an already-lowered nightly rate. The two compound, and the effective nightly rate lands well below anything you would have knowingly accepted.
Related terms
- ADR (Average Daily Rate) — The average nightly rate actually paid across the nights you sold — it says nothing about the nights you did not sell.
- Minimum stay (min-night requirement) — The fewest nights a guest may book — a lever that protects your turnover costs and destroys your occupancy in equal measure if left static.
- RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Rental) — Revenue divided by every night the property was available — the single number that cannot be improved by simply pricing yourself out of the market.