Should You Set a Minimum Nightly Stay for Your Vacation Rental?

One of the more common questions we get from homeowners is whether they can set a minimum number of nights guests must book. It’s a good question—and like most things in this business, the answer depends on what you’re trying to achieve.

It’s Your Home—Your Call

If setting a flat minimum stay is about personal preference, that’s absolutely your prerogative. Some owners want to limit wear and tear from too many turnovers, or they simply prefer the idea of having longer stays. Others want to ensure each booking hits a certain dollar threshold—like keeping any stay above, say, $500 in total revenue.

In these cases, a vacation rental manager should always be happy to honor your wishes. It’s your home, after all.

Where Minimum Stays Impact Revenue

However, if your goal is to maximize your revenue potential, we typically recommend a more flexible, data-driven approach to minimum night stays.

This is where things get interesting. As opposed to picking a random minimum and stick to it year-round, you can adapt minimum stays dynamically based on how far out a booking is being made—and how local travel patterns are trending. It’s better to rent for more nights rather than less, but it’s also better to be rented out vs not rented out, so you must balance both of those factors.

Here’s how it works:

• Far in advance: Hold out for longer stays—typically a 4-night minimum for high-demand weekends or holiday periods booked more than 120 or even 180 days out. This protects high-value dates and prevents the calendar from getting filled with short, low-value stays far in advance.
• Mid-term window: As you get get closer to a target stay date—say, within 90 days—you can drop the minimum to three nights. This helps keep the calendar competitive while still prioritizing longer, more lucrative bookings.
• Last-minute: When you’re within 30–45 days of check-in, you can lower the minimum to two nights. This lets you fill orphan gaps and capture last-minute travelers who are looking for a quick getaway but won’t book if they’re required to stay too long.

This strategy isn’t random. It would be based on actual local booking patterns and real-time data for similar homes in your market. The aim is simple: better occupancy, better pricing, and better ranking on platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo.

Why Flexibility Matters

When your listing has flexible minimum stays, it performs better in the eyes of the travel platforms’ algorithms. That means it’s shown to more potential guests. More eyes on your property mean more chances to secure bookings—at the right price.

In short, as opposed to just optimizing for any single variable like nightly rate or length of stay, you can balance revenue, occupancy, guest booking behavior, and listing visibility simultaneously—all in a market that changes every season.

When To Adjust

Of course, no strategy is static. It is important to monitor market conditions continuously—like average booking windows and seasonal demand shifts. For example, in certain market conditions (especially in times of economic uncertainty), data may show that guests are booking closer to their travel dates than in past years. That means the minimum-stay strategy must adjust accordingly, so you don’t risk leaving valuable nights unbooked or having to cut rates at the last minute to fill gaps.

The Bottom Line

If you’d prefer a fixed minimum, that is your call. But if your priority is to maximize your rental income, a dynamic minimum-stay policy tends to deliver better results.

Written by Anish Patel, Head of Owner Relations at Vinifera Homes (anish@viniferahomes.com)