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The Airbnb Two Night Minimum

When and why to set a nightly booking limit

Sound Familiar?

Pesky Problem

You’re worried setting a nightly minimum will limit revenue.

There are a lot of reasons to set a two night minimum. Some hosts use it as a way to try and prevent unauthorized parties thrown by local troublemakers. For others, it’s a strategy to protect weekends from getting chopped up into unusable leftovers. Still other hosts simply use it as a way to limit all those turnover tasks when the profit doesn’t quite justify their time investment.

And yet, despite all of those reasons, plenty of hosts never set a limit because they’re worried about stunting their earnings by imposing a seemingly artificial barrier. After all, if someone wants to pay you for a night, why wouldn’t you let them?

Let's Try This

Bite-Size Solution

Run a time-limited experiment.

First, remember that this is your Airbnb operation, and you’re allowed—nay, encouraged!—to experiment. If there are hosting approaches on the sidelines that you’re interested in testing out, do it! Experimentation is the best way to finetune your operation and create a hosting routine ideally suited for you.

So if you’re interested in the potential benefits of a two night minimum, it’s time to craft a test. Write down the key goals you’re hoping to reach with this change, and the metrics you can use to measure the success or failure of the experiment. Set a start and end date for yourself, and take notes throughout. What happens with your bookings? How does the calendar look? Are you attracting your ideal guests?

Unless your primary demographic is folks driving through town in need of a one night stay, then a two night minimum may well be worth your time. (On the other hand, we’ve seen brilliant Airbnbs that cater to exactly those long road-trippers needing a single night. A savvy garage-turned-studio-apartment in Amarillo, Texas comes to mind. If that’s you, trust your gut and set this idea aside.)

5 Minutes

Here's Your First Step

See how many guests have booked just one night.

First things first: look at your data. Before you implement any experiment, you’ll want to take note of your starting point as a benchmark. Look at the last six months, and see, out of all the bookings, how many were actually just one night? Maybe there were just a few. Or maybe you’ve got a calendar full of half-booked weekends. If that’s the case, there may actually be more revenue sitting on the other side of a nightly minimum.

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