If you need a certain amount of time before/after a booking in order to get your rental cleaned and make sure everything is ready for your next guests, you can configure a preparation time in your rental's Booking Settings.
Read about:
- How to activate the preparation time
- Preparation time behavior in the calendar
- How the preparation time works with OTA
How to activate the preparation time
To establish a preparation time for your rental, you need to do it in the rental's booking settings.
To do so, follow these steps:
- Go to your Main Menu in the top left corner and select Rentals.
- Choose the rental you want to amend and select Booking Settings.
- In the section Preparation time at the bottom of the page, activate the toggle and select 1 day, or 2 days of preparation time from the drop-down menu.
💡 Note: In case you cannot see the section Preparation time, please get in touch with our Support Team, and they will be happy to activate the feature for you.
Preparation time behavior in the calendar
Once the preparation time feature is activated, this means that for each existing booking in your calendar and for each new reservation, the preparation time will be added before or after the booking.
💡 Note: The preparation time can currently not be added for closed periods or bookings imported via iCal.
The way the preparation time will be applied to a booking depends on if the booking is alone, or back-to-back with another reservation.
| If... | then... |
|---|---|
| the feature is activated, and the booking is alone. Or once the feature is active and a new booking enters your calendar... |
a preparation time will be created before and after the booking, so that you have time to prepare the rental before and make sure the calendar is blocked until the next available date for guests to book. 💡 Note: If the booking gets canceled, the preparation time will be automatically removed with the booking. |
| the feature is activated, and you have two or more bookings back-to-back. Or once the feature is active, you manually create a booking and override a preparation time... |
a preparation time will only be created before the first booking and after the last booking. 💡 Note: If one of the bookings gets canceled, the preparation times will be automatically removed with the canceled booking, and a preparation time will be added to the remaining booking. |
💡 Note: The days when the preparation time is applied will become unavailable in your calendar, but you can still create a booking manually and override the preparation time if you wish to.
How the preparation time works with OTA
The preparation time will be exported to your connected OTA (via API) and dates will be blocked for check-in on the guest calendar. The preparation time setting, however, is only synchronized with Airbnb. In case you want to use a different preparation time for Airbnb bookings, you can set this up on your rental's Channels page.
💡 Note: If the preparation time in your booking settings does not match the preparation time on your channels page, you will see a different availability in your Lodgify calendar and in your Airbnb calendar.
➡ Example: If you set a preparation time of 1 day in Lodgify and a preparation time of 2 days for Airbnb in your channels page, you will see a soft block of one day in Lodgify, while Airbnb will hard block 2 days in their calendar.
💡 Note: A soft block means that you can still manually create a booking for a date where a preparation time exists. In case the date is hard blocked, this will not be possible.