With protected periods, you can temporarily give specific guest groups exclusive access to the booking engine. For example, you can allow regular guests, returning guests, or family and friends to book earlier than other guests.
Guests who belong to the selected guest group verify themselves using their email address to access the protected booking period.
What are protected periods?
A protected period determines which guest group has access to make a booking during a specific period. You can choose:
which guest group gets access;
which accommodations this applies to;
when the guest group has access.
For example, you can give regular guests early access to bookings for the next season. You could allow the Regular guests guest group to start booking from 1 November, while bookings only open to all other guests from 1 December. This gives your regular guests one month of priority booking. This is also the example used later in this article to explain how protected periods work in practice.
Before setting up a protected period
A protected period is linked to a guest group. First, make sure you have created the required guest group and added the correct guests to it.
For more information about creating guest groups and adding guests, see the article Create and manage guest groups.
Set up a protected period
Find the available period for which you want to set up exclusive access and click Edit.
Click Protected periods.
Enter the start and end dates of the protected period.
Select the guest group that should have access during this period.
Click the cross to close the window. The information you entered will remain saved.
Then click Save changes.
The selected guest group can now make bookings during the protected period.
The start and end dates of a protected period refer to the booking period: the period during which the guest is allowed to make a booking. They do not refer to the arrival and departure dates of the stay.