As you may have noticed, holidays are now set on the rate period as a fixed amount, to be charged per night or per stay, over and above the regular charges that occur.
The reason we moved to this model was because the previous structure created logical ambiguities. Previously, holidays were their own charge type called 'Single Holiday Night' which acted like the 'Single Night' charge type. Suppose a guest booked the week surrounding a holiday - a very typical scenario. Should the system calculate all the days in the week as individual holiday nights? Or should a regular week be used with a single holiday night tacked on for the specific night which is a holiday? And what if you want to have different holiday charges, depending on length of stay, as you do with regular charges?
Now, holidays are simply an extra charge, layered on top of whatever your current rate period/charge types generate.
If you open one of your rate periods and click the Change Details buttons, you'll notice a section at the bottom titled "Holidays". By default, it isn't selected which means no extra charge is added.
If you select it, a few more options will appear which allow you to enter the extra charge amount and whether you want to bill it per night or per stay.
When holiday charges occur, the quote (and/or booking) will reflect a new line item that shows the guest the extra charge.
Holiday List
The question we get the most about holidays is the obvious one - When do they occur? Since our support documents are not completely finished, I wanted to provide those details here.
Starting with 2011, here are the holidays, and the specific day on which they occur, for the next five years:
| Holiday | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 |
| New Year's Day | Jan 1 | Jan 1 | Jan 1 | Jan 1 | Jan 1 |
| MLK Day | Jan 17 | Jan 16 | Jan 21 | Jan 20 | Jan 19 |
| President's Day | Feb 21 | Feb 20 | Feb 18 | Feb 17 | Feb 16 |
| Memorial Day | May 30 | May 28 | May 27 | May 26 | May 25 |
| Independence Day | Jul 4 | Jul 4 | Jul 4 | Jul 4 | Jul 4 |
| Labor Day | Sep 5 | Sep 3 | Sep 2 | Sep 1 | Sep 7 |
| Columbus Day | Oct 10 | Oct 8 | Oct 14 | Oct 13 | Oct 12 |
| Veteran's Day | Nov 11 | Nov 12 | Nov 11 | Nov 11 | Nov 11 |
| Thanksgiving | Nov 24 | Nov 22 | Nov 28 | May 27 | Nov 26 |
| Christmas | Dec 25 | Dec 25 | Dec 25 | Dec 25 | Dec 25 |
As you'll notice, our list is similar to the official list of US "major" holidays which can be found on a variety of other websites.
We know that many owners don't follow some of these holidays, or may have others that they want to add, so we plan on adding a lot more functionality. Eventually, all major and minor holidays will be programmed into the system, for the US and other countries, allowing owners to follow all, only major, only minor or a custom list of their own. For the moment, if you don't want to charge extra for a particular holiday, simply remove it from the quote before sending the quote to your guest.
