We’re often asked for tips on how to boost bookings and, in particular, midweek bookings. There are various simple things you can do (all of which are relevant to boosting bookings at any time, not just midweek):
- Ensure your pricing is clearly stated (and easy to find) on your website.
- Include information on your website about the local area and things to do that would warrant a special midweek getaway.
- Offer a special price or discount to sell a certain date or dates.
- List your property on marketing channels to extend your reach. Many of these work on pay for performance commission models, which makes testing them very low risk.
- Charge more for weekends than midweek stays.
- If you end up with a 1-night gap between bookings, offer it half-price to the adjacent bookers. If they say, “No thanks but I’d love to arrive early/leave later”, then be ready with a price for that instead.
You might, however, need to look a little closer at your short breaks model and make some further adjustments.
Optimise your last-minute availability
Consider opening up your last-minute availability to welcome bookings on a fully flexible basis in order to generate more bookings: any arrival day, any departure day, any length of stay. You can load the price for shorter stays so any length of stay is profitable.
The growing trend of booking accommodation at the last minute is here to stay. In fact, having a “we’re open” approach is something the big marketing channels, such as Booking.com, both monitor and rank you on in a bid to ensure supply meets their high demand for last-minute stays.
There are various ways to do this in SuperControl. Just log in to your account and go to Properties > Edit and scroll to Short breaks. Here, you can set how many days prior to arrival to always allow short breaks.
If you set this number to 14, that means if your property is unbooked 14 days prior to a chosen start date, it will open up for short breaks. This will over-rule the information in your Price planner, so will allow short breaks even at a time of year you’d normally only accept 7-night stays.
You must then go in to your Price planner and set the prices for your short breaks (see below). Obviously, you can set your rates so you won’t be out of pocket for a shorter stay, so you needn’t lose out.
If you do this, you’ll certainly gain more bookings from the likes of Booking.com, and hopefully more bookings direct from your website too.
