Long weekends and events: when to raise the price of your holiday let
Published · 5-minute read
A long weekend, a trade fair or a concert can fill your area within days. If you find out late, you sell those nights at the price of any ordinary Tuesday. The good news: almost all of these dates are known months in advance. Here’s how to get ready for them.
1. Build your calendar of special dates
Spend an afternoon putting everything that moves demand in your area into your calendar:
- Public holidays and long weekends (puentes): national, regional and local ones. They are published every year in the official work calendar (the BOE and your region’s gazette).
- Local festivals and fairs: patron saint festivities, Easter week, summer fairs, carnivals.
- Conferences and trade fairs: check the events calendar of the nearest exhibition or conference centre.
- Concerts and matches: ticketing sites and the stadium or venue announce dates well in advance.
- School holidays, including those of the countries your guests come from if you host many foreign visitors.
2. Review your price early
Nights on special dates are booked earlier than normal ones. Review your price for those nights as soon as you know the date, not the week before. If they fill up very early with no effort, they were probably too cheap: bear it in mind for next time.
3. Compare the same nights with similar listings
Search as if you were a guest: same nights, same number of people and listings similar to yours. See what they charge for those exact dates and where you stand. Search again a few weeks later: on high-demand dates prices move fast.
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4. Adjust your minimum stay
On a three-night long weekend, a one-night booking in the middle can leave you with two loose nights that are hard to sell. Asking for a minimum stay equal to the length of the long weekend usually avoids it. Once the event is over, go back to your usual minimum stay.
5. Check your automatic discounts
Last-minute, long-stay or platform programme discounts can apply on their own to dates that would fill up anyway. Before each busy date, check which discounts are active and whether you want to keep them for those nights.
6. Mention it in your listing
If you’re close to the exhibition centre, the stadium or the heart of the festivities, say so in your description with fixed facts (“a 10-minute walk from the conference centre”). There’s no need to change your title for every event: what helps is that guests see quickly that it suits them.
7. Raise it sensibly
A special date isn’t a blank cheque. A price far above similar listings can leave your place empty just when everything else is full. And the other way round: when the date has passed and demand drops, don’t go below your minimum price.
Common mistakes
- Hearing about it from the neighbours. If everything is already full, you’re too late.
- Forgetting local holidays, which change from one town to the next.
- Raising the price on one platform only and leaving the other as usual.
- Leaving the long-weekend minimum stay on all year.
In short
- Note holidays, fairs and events in your area early.
- Review your price as soon as you know the date.
- Compare the same nights with similar listings.
- Adjust your minimum stay so you don’t leave gaps.
- Check your automatic discounts.
- Mention it in your listing and raise prices sensibly.
This guide is for information only and guarantees no result: every property and every area is different. Always check dates against their official source.