What is a gap night?
Minimum length of stay restrictions help you avoid short, hard-to-fill bookings. But they can have an unintended side effect: leaving short pockets of dates between reservations completely unbookable. This is what we call a gap night.
A gap night occurs when the number of available nights between two reservations is shorter than a property’s minimum length of stay requirement, making those dates unbookable.
Example: If your property requires a three-night minimum stay, but only two nights are left open between existing bookings, those two nights cannot be booked. We refer to these as gap nights.
How do I fix gap nights?
There are two ways to manage gap nights:
Prevent them by adding a less restrictive rate plan
Fix specific problem nights by adjusting minimum stays
Option 1: Prevent gap nights with a less restrictive rate plan
To capture reservations on these unbookable dates, you can introduce a secondary rate plan with a reduced minimum stay. Because this rate plan offers more flexibility, you can set its price a little higher, for example 5% above the standard rate that carries your minimum stay restriction.
Create the rate plan
Go to Rooms and rates > Rate plans, then click Add a rate plan.
Create the new rate plan and select Derive daily rates to derive it from your standard rate plan.
Apply your increase as a percentage or amount (for example, increase by 5%).
Assign the rate plan to your room types to create your room rates.
Set the reduced minimum stay. Set the lower minimum stay in Distribution > Inventory, or in your PMS/RMS, if it syncs restrictions to SiteMinder.
💡 If you have an integrated PMS/RMS:
You can set up the derived rate plan in either your PMS or your SiteMinder platform.
Create matching rooms and rates in both your SiteMinder platform (Rooms and rates > Rate plans) and your connected system. Map the new room rate to your connected system in Distribution > Connectivities.
Map the rate plan to your channels
Go to Rooms and rates > Rate plans.
Find your new rate plan and expand it to see the room rate.
Open the actions menu for the room rate, then click Map to channel.
Select the channel you want to map to.
In Channel rate configuration, set Start updating channel to Yes.
Under Mapped to, select the rate to map to (with Booking.com enhanced sync you can create a new room rate on the channel if needed).
Set additional channel rate settings if required.
Click Save.
A confirmation appears when the room rate is mapped successfully. Repeat this for each channel you want to sell the rate plan on.
Note:
For most channels (exception: Booking.com and Airbnb with enhanced sync enabled), you will also need to create the rate directly in the channel's extranet
The example below shows Booking.com with enhanced sync enabled
Option 2: Fix specific problem nights by adjusting minimum stays
⚠️ Only follow the below steps if you don't have a PMS/RMS that syncs restrictions to SiteMinder. If you do have a connected PMS/RMS that syncs restrictions to SiteMinder, update restrictions in your connected system, not the inventory grid. Any changes made in the inventory grid will be overwritten.
To adjust minimum stays in the inventory grid:
Go to Distribution > Inventory.
Find the room rate you want to update.
Click on the cell in the Min Stay or Max Stay column for the specific date.
Enter the new value then click Save.