Rate rule: Early booking

The “Booking more than X days / months / years ahead” rule lets you automatically adjust your rental price based on how far in advance a guest books compared to the check-in date.

This is useful when you want to:

• Reward early bookers with a discount (to secure bookings earlier), or
• Charge a premium for very early bookings (for example, when you know demand is strong far in advance)

You can choose the period unit that makes the most sense for your business: days, months, or years.

How it works

When a new booking is created, Smily calculates the time between:

• the booking date (when the guest books), and
• the check-in date

If the booking is more than X days/months/years ahead, Smily applies the percentage you configured to the rate.

Example (discount):

If you add the rule Early Booking: 60 days: -5%, then any booking made more than 60 days before check-in will receive a 5% discount.

When you configure several early booking rules

You can add multiple “Booking more than X…” rules in the same rate table, for example to apply different adjustments depending on how early the guest books.

In that case, one booking may match more than one rule (for example, a booking made 10 months ahead is also more than 8 months ahead, more than 6 months ahead, etc.).

Smily will apply the rule with the longest time threshold among the matching rules — meaning the rule that corresponds to the guest booking the furthest in advance.

This helps you define clear “bands” such as:

• very early booking (largest threshold),
• medium early booking,
• slightly early booking (smaller threshold)

Examples

Example 1 — Surcharges (months)

Rules configured:

• More than 10 months ahead: +20%
• More than 8 months ahead: +15%
• More than 6 months ahead: +10%
• More than 3 months ahead: +9%

A guest books 10 months ahead. Several rules match, so Smily applies +20% (the 10 months rule).

Example 2 — Surcharges (days)

Rules configured:

• More than 90 days ahead: +20%
• More than 75 days ahead: +17.5%
• More than 60 days ahead: +15%
• More than 45 days ahead: +12.5%
• More than 30 days ahead: +10%
• A guest books 90 days ahead → Smily applies +20% (90 days rule)
• A guest books 50 days ahead → Smily applies +12.5% (45 days rule)

Benefits for your pricing strategy

• More accurate pricing tiers: the adjustment matches the booking’s lead time band you defined.
• More control: you can fine-tune discounts/surcharges for different advance-booking windows.
• Clearer setup: you can safely create several early-booking thresholds without ambiguity about which one will apply.