Flexible Stays is a powerful feature that lets you unlock short-stay bookings in the gaps between your regular reservations. Instead of leaving those purple gaps on your calendar untouched, Flexible Stays makes them available to guests seeking shorter stays, helping you maximize occupancy and increase your earnings without changing your core property settings.

Understanding Flexible Stays

With Holidu's Flexible Stays feature, you can open up bookable nights between bookings — the gaps shown in purple on your calendar that wouldn't usually be bookable due to your minimum-stay rules or fixed check-in and check-out days. Activating Flexible Stays makes those nights available without changing your standard settings, helping you capture short-stay demand you'd otherwise miss.

How to Activate Flexible Stays

Activating Flexible Stays is straightforward and can be done in just a few steps. You can configure these settings from either the Discounts section or the Calendar section — the outcome will be the same.

Method 1: From the Discounts Section

Follow these steps to activate Flexible Stays through the Discounts menu:

1. Log in to your Holidu account and select the property you want to update
2. Go to "Configuration" on the left-hand side
3. Scroll down and click on "Discounts"
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and find the "Fill short gaps between reservations" option
5. Click on "Configure"
6. Choose your preferred minimum stay for the gap period: 1, 2, or 3 nights
7. Set your pricing — you can increase the price per night up to 50% above your standard rate
8. Click "Activate" to confirm and save your configuration

What Are the Benefits of Flexible Stays?

Enabling Flexible Stays offers multiple advantages for your property's performance and revenue:

• More bookings: Short-stay nights become bookable during high-demand periods, converting unused calendar space into revenue
• Better visibility: Over 20% of peak-season searches are for short stays, and Flexible Stays helps you capture this segment
• More guest reviews: Every booking is another chance for guest feedback, which boosts your credibility and property ranking
• Higher ranking potential: Bookable gaps support your property's performance in search results and increase discoverability
• Less manual work: No need to adjust your calendar by hand for each gap — the system handles it automatically

Things to Keep in Mind

Before activating Flexible Stays, understand how the feature works and what it affects:

• The feature only affects calendar gaps where your current settings don't allow bookings
• This setting overrides your current minimum-stay requirements and short-stay rules for gap periods only
• Check-in and check-out will be possible on any day for these special gap nights
• If a booking is made for a gap period, the special pricing and flexible stay rules apply only to that booking
• Flexible Stay bookings will appear tagged in your calendar for easy identification and management
• You can deactivate the feature anytime from the same menu without affecting existing bookings

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I exclude certain dates from Flexible Stays?

For now, activating Flexible Stays applies to all gap nights that match your configured settings. However, you can still manually block any specific dates you don't want to open for short stays using your calendar's blocking feature.

Can I change the Flexible Stays settings later?

Yes, absolutely. You can update your minimum-stay requirement, adjust pricing, or completely disable Flexible Stays at any time by returning to the same Configuration menu. Changes take effect immediately for future bookings.

What happens to existing bookings if I deactivate Flexible Stays?

Deactivating Flexible Stays does not affect any bookings already made. Guests with confirmed reservations will keep their bookings, and the special pricing and flexible rules will apply only to their stay. The feature simply stops opening new gaps for future bookings.

Can I set different pricing for different gap periods?

The current Flexible Stays feature applies the same pricing increase across all gap periods once activated. If you need different pricing for specific dates, you can manually adjust individual dates in your calendar or temporarily deactivate the feature to make manual adjustments.

Will Flexible Stays affect my minimum-stay requirements for regular bookings?

No. Flexible Stays only affects gap nights between your existing reservations. Your standard minimum-stay settings remain unchanged for all other bookable dates, ensuring your core booking rules stay intact.