Note: I used an AI assistant (Claude) to help write this article. The example property is invented. These are rules of thumb, not predictions, and they do not guarantee more bookings or higher income. I am not an accountant.
December is a month when many hosts feel pressure about empty nights and lower the price on every empty date. In my view that is often a mistake. Here is a simple way to sort the dates first.
Take your calendar for the month and mark every empty night. Then sort each empty night into one of three groups.
Holiday window. Empty nights inside roughly 22 December to 2 January. Demand for these dates is often strong, so discounting them early can give money away. A reasonable rule is to hold the price or raise it by 10 to 15%, and to avoid discounting them early. School holidays differ by country and year, so check the dates for the countries your guests come from.
Short gaps. An empty gap of 1 or 2 nights between two stays is hard to fill at full price, because many guests want longer stays. A reasonable rule is to lower the price by about 10% or to allow a 1-night stay for those dates.
All other empty nights. If they are more than 14 days away, a small discount of about 8% is a mild test. If they are closer than 14 days, a larger discount of about 12% is a reasonable rule of thumb (my own assumption, not data), because the chance to fill them shrinks every day.
Worked example (invented property, 31 December nights):
- 22 nights are empty
- Holiday window: 22 to 27 December and 30 to 31 December, so hold or raise those
- Other empty nights from 8 to 21 December: lower by 8%
Before you lower any price, check the break-even price for your property (the minimum average price that covers cleaning, commission and fixed costs, which I explained in my previous article). That number is the average you need over the whole period, not a minimum for every night. A discounted night that still covers commission and cleaning is better than an empty night. The risk is discounting so many nights that your average falls below the break-even price; then the month as a whole loses money.
What these rules do not do: they do not know your local events, your competitors, or your reviews. Add your own dates by hand, such as a festival or a conference.
I am testing a small desktop tool that applies these rules to a booking export and prints a December list like the one above. It is not built yet. There is a sample report on invented data and a waiting list: https://stayledger-515.pages.dev/?src=devto
Which of the three groups is largest on your own December calendar?
