Specials: discounts that fill quiet nights

Quiet midweek nights and last-minute gaps don't fill themselves. Specials are discounts you define once and Accommador applies automatically: an eligible guest simply sees a lower price on your booking page, with the saving spelled out — no code to type, nothing for them to know about in advance.

The four kinds of special

• Early bird — a percentage off for guests who book well ahead. You set the discount and how many days ahead counts as early.
• Last minute — a percentage off for guests booking close to arrival, to fill gaps that would otherwise go empty.
• Stay X, get Y free — free nights for longer stays, such as "stay 3 nights, get 1 free". The cheapest qualifying nights are the free ones, and the deal repeats on longer stays — on stay-3-get-1, a six-night stay earns two free nights.
• Length of stay — a percentage off every night after the first few, such as 20% off every night beyond the third, so the discount deepens the longer the stay.

What the guest sees

The discounted price, with the original struck through beside it and the special's name shown as a badge — so "Winter Midweek Deal" does its own marketing right on the room card. This appears on your booking page and in the booking widget on your own website. The guest books and pays the discounted amount; nothing extra to do.

How specials combine

One special applies per booking. If a stay qualifies for more than one, the special you've given the higher priority wins, and the bigger saving breaks a tie — a guest never has two specials piled onto the same booking. A coupon code, though, does stack: if a guest enters one, it comes off after the special, on top of it.

Staying in control

Each special carries its own guardrails, all optional:

• A validity window — the period during which bookings can be made under it.
• Blackout periods — stay dates it never applies to, like Christmas week.
• A minimum number of nights.
• Which of your prices it applies to (leave blank for all of them).
• Caps — a total number of bookings, and a monthly limit per room type, so a generous deal can't run away on you.

Setting one up

1. Open Distribution → Booking Engine and go to the Specials tab.
2. Choose New special, give it a name and description, and pick the type. The form shows just the settings that type needs.
3. Add any guardrails, then save. You can edit or deactivate it from the list at any time.

Good to know

Specials aren't only for the booking page — an eligible special also applies when you or your team take a booking by hand, so a phone guest gets the same deal as a web guest. And your reports show what you actually earned: the discount is reflected in the room revenue itself, with the saving noted on the booking, so your average rates and revenue figures report the achieved price rather than a rate nobody paid.