The occupancy simulator

A 10am checkout lets the same day turn over: guest out at 10, cleaner in, next guest at 3pm. Keeping the checkout night empty kills that — every booking leaves a reset night behind it.

Run a year above and around 70 nights come out blue. A yield manager prices every one of them as lost revenue. That bill is fake. An empty night only costs money if someone wanted to check in the same day another guest left — and outside December, almost nobody does. Untick "Checkout night stays empty" above and compare: the real difference is closer to 15–18 nights a year, depending on the minimum stay.

Nearly all of those nights sit in December and January, at the year's highest rates; May to September cost almost nothing, because the night after a winter checkout was going to stand empty anyway.

So the price is about two and a half weeks of revenue a year, spent so that nobody's last morning ends with a cleaning team waiting outside the door.

Reset night

The empty night behind every departure. A guest leaves at 3pm, the house is put back together the next morning, and nobody sleeps there in between. Untick "Checkout night stays empty" and these nights go back on sale.

Min stay

The shortest booking the house accepts. Someone wanting fewer nights either stretches their stay to meet it or books elsewhere.

Gap fill

A short stay sold into a hole too small for the minimum — an exception to the rule rather than the rule. More likely to find a taker in busy months than in June.

Market ceilings

A monthly cap on how many nights can realistically sell. December and January sit at 100% (operators here report being fully sold in peak); the winter months are estimates of around 40–50%. Stat cards show occupancy against these ceilings, not against 365 days.

Enquiries/yr

How many couples ask about dates in a year, spread across the seasons.

Base rate

The shoulder-season nightly rate. The actual rate follows the season, from 0.6× in midwinter to 1.7× in December.

Short gap, no taker

A small hole between bookings that was offered as a short stay and found nobody that year. The single-night version is mostly manufactured by the empty-checkout-night rule, which eats both ends of a small gap.

Open

Empty nights long enough for the minimum stay. Nothing blocked them — demand ran out.