How to Maximize Your Visibility with Long Availability
The World’s Official ‘Tourism Year’
Did you know there is an official ‘tourism year’ that finishes on 31 March each year?
A large portion of the travel industry still requires a full ‘tourism’ year’s worth of availability and dates. By not setting long availability you limit your chances of being seen on platforms, agents and channels.
You may even find that the downstream sellers of a platform will ignore Stays that don’t have a full tourism year’s worth of availability and prices even if the platform itself has listed you for less. This is because they find their own clients book a long way ahead and without availability well into the future they can’t be bothered with Stays that can’t easily be sold.
So while you may be listed on the platform’s own website you’re missing out of the platform’s network of resellers, agents, ambassadors and affiliates also selling and marketing your Stay.
Setting a Full Year is the Solution
As we approach the end of the 2024-25 tourism year you will want to update your availability for the next tourism year – the 2025-26 tourism year.
You will want to set your availability through to at least 31 March 2026.
In many ‘trade’ platorms like Nomad Stays you do this by setting up your ‘Sales Packages’ for the full year. Of course you can vary the prices throughout the year but ensuring you have packages that run right through to 31 March 2026 is the key.
There are even rich digital nomads who will book long term stays in peak periods at large prices. Without having Peak Period packages you will miss out on these super large and super long stays.
Let Your Availability Calendar Manage each nights availability
Once your Packages are set your availability calendar is the ideal way to manage the fine details of which particular date is available or not.
Dates that are booked and fed through to platforms from your Channel Manager or online Calendar are automatically blocked by modern platforms from being booked over. The iCal technology is the most widely used technology set for synchronising these calendars.
While your package might be available for a particular month if there are no rooms available then a modern platform won’t be able to book these closed off dates.
Getting the Best of Both short and long Worlds in Peak Season(s)
The combination of packages for all year and availability from an online calendar offers you great opportunties for mixing and matching your clients and maximising your revenue.
For instance while you might have set a highly priced digital nomad monthly package for your peak season it won’t be able to be booked if the room isn’t available for each night in that period they wish to book.
Yet, if you set this peak season rate for longer stay you may find that you book out your peak season at good rates and fewer bookings. Fewer, longer bookings of course means less cleaning, unsold days and change over effort.
Plus you are visible on more platforms and outlets a long way ahead.
