How do I add pricing based on the duration of the booking?

Learn how to add pricing based on booking duration, configure the rate, and preview the experience.

You can configure Guests at a single rate or multiple rates for the duration of the booking. You can base pricing on an amount or a percentage, with increases or decreases.

Accessing the features mentioned in this article

Where can I find this feature using the top menu?

• Availability Events: Inventory > Products > Pricing
• Availability Event Rates: Inventory > Custom Rates
   

What more do I need to use this feature?

• Admin permissions to manage inventory or restricted permissions to View Products and Assets and Manage Products and Assets.
• Duration rates are available only for those using All Day, Nightly, and Flex Time, not Timeslots.
   

Which Checkfront version supports this feature - classic items, classic products, or both?

• Your account must have access to classic products (Inventory > Products), a key feature of our classic products version of Checkfront. This feature is not available for use with classic items (Inventory > Items) in our classic items version. → Learn more about products. 

What is a duration rate? A duration rate allows you to configure pricing increases or decreases, by dollar amount or percentage, based on the booking duration, and apply them to the base rate configured for your product.

Examples of Duration Rates Single Duration Rates are where the longer the booking, the lower (or higher) the rate. For example, a three-night hotel booking is only $90.00 a night, instead of $100.00 for one to two nights. The system then charges Guests a single reduced rate for the duration of the booking, totaling $270.00. Multiple Duration Rates are where the longer the booking duration, the lower (or higher) the rates become. For example, a hotel booking would be $100.00 for the first and second nights but only $90.00 for the third night. The system charges Guests different rates per night, totaling $290.00.

How do I create a product? This article focuses on adding duration rates to products during configuration. For a detailed walk-through of product creation, please see the following series: Introduction to products and the product builder We also have an entire series on creating and managing custom rates, including duration rates, that you can check out here! Introduction to custom rates

To configure your duration-based pricing, follow these steps.

1. Add a duration rate
2. Configure the duration rate
3. Preview the Customer booking experience

Start by adding a Duration Rate to your product. From the Pricing tab of the Product Builder (Inventory > Product > edit/+new product), select Duration from the Add Rate dropdown. 

The Duration option is not available when using timeslots The system hides the duration option when the Product uses Timeslots. Duration rates are available only for All Day, Nightly, and Flex Time.

This action opens the Duration Rate modal, from which you can configure the specifics of your rate. 

1. Choose a name for the duration rate, e.g., Winter Long Term Rental Rates. There is a 13-character limit on rate names.
2. Specify the Date Range within which this rate applies, e.g., Nov 1, 2022, --> Feb 28, 2022. You can also remove the End Date by clicking the Remove button. Without an end date, the rate is always in effect.
3. Specify the various applicable rates:
   1. Click +Add Duration to create a second tier.
   2. Toggle the controls (+/-) next to the number fields until you have the range of numbers needed for each tier, e.g., 3 - 6 days, 7 - Max days. Max represents the top limit configured for your product, e.g., a discounted rate for a booking 7 days or longer; the max might be 14 days.
   3. Specify the rate adjustment for each tier. You can adjust rates by a monetary amount ($) or percentage (%) per day.
   4. Repeat the process for every new tier you need. You can delete a range by clicking the remove icon (x) at the end of the row. The system adjusts the tier range accordingly.
4. Decide whether you want to charge a single rate or multiple rates throughout the booking. By default, we charge the single applicable rate for the entire booking, e.g., $90.00 for three nights. With the Apply Multi Duration setting enabled, each rate that applies is charged, e.g., $100.00 for the first two nights, then $90.00 for the third night.
5. Next, you can see an example of how this rate would impact base pricing via the Pricing Preview. Use the number of days toggle to see how pricing changes the longer the Guest books!
6. Finally, decide which other products or product categories you need to apply this to. You can also manage product categories from the Custom Rates page (Inventory > Custom Rates).
7. Don't forget to click the Save button to save your changes!
    

You can now see the Duration Rates applied to your base rate within the Pricing Table under the Pricing tab.

Finally, you can click the Preview button to view your pricing configuration from the Customer's perspective of the booking pages. 

The above example shows a single-duration rate applied to three- to six-night bookings. Bookers are charged a reduced rate of $90.00 per night for $270.00, a 10% reduction on the base rate.

We have configured the above example as a Multi-Duration rate. Bookers are charged $100.00 for the first two nights and $90.00 for the third night, a 10% reduction compared to the rate for the first two nights. The total of the booking is $290.00.