Why You Should Never Book a 27 Day Stay on Airbnb

Add just 1 more day to your stay. 28 days usually costs much less.

One of the benefits of working at Hyatus is learning some cool tricks when it comes to finding the perfect vacation rental on Airbnb. Here’s one of my favorites that can really save you a bunch of money on your next Airbnb vacation.

The Trick

If you are booking a stay that is just under a week (6 or 5 days), or just under a month, (27 days because on Airbnb any stay of 28 days or longer is considered a month) you are usually paying far more than you would pay for the same dates but with an extra day at the end (the same 27 days + 1 day to make a 28 day stay).

For example, a quick search for Airbnbs in Virginia Beach showed this nice Airbnb for $80/night. That’s $2,837 for a 27 day stay after all fees are added up.

By extending your stay from 27 days to 28, the same apartment goes down to….

Only $1,867! By staying 1 day longer, you can save $970 or 34% of your previous booking price! Just think about all the people who booked 24, 25, 26 or 27 day stays at this property — they paid far more than they would have had to pay had they taken a few extra nights at the end of their stay. (But don’t feel too bad because Ava seems like a great host and who can’t use some extra cash!)

Why It Works

The number 27 is a famously unlucky number so ….jk! Here’s the truth: most hosts set percentage discounts based on how long you stay. However, that doesn’t mean the longer you stay the cheaper your nightly rate. These discounts usually kick-in in tiers. At 7 days you can expect to get about 10% off. At 28 days you can expect the much larger monthly discount of usually about 20–30% off.

This means that if you are looking to stay about 25 days, you can increase the number of days to 28, and by triggering the monthly discount, actually decrease your total price while also getting some extra free nights to boot.

Of course not all examples are as extreme as my first example, but usually the savings are pretty great. This Airbnb charges 219/night for a 27 day stay.

By increasing your stay by 1 day to a 28 day stay your price actually goes down!

In this case you can save $391 by staying an extra day. It’s crazy.

The same logic applies to 7 day stays that qualify for weekly discounts vs 6 day stays that don’t. I won’t paste any more examples because you get the idea — before booking a stay at a border (i.e. 6 or 27), check if you can save a ton of money by booking a longer stay.

Thanks for reading and please leave any comments below.

P.S. If you’re thinking this trick might work at Hyatus, it doesn’t :( But still, check out our apartments for really great prices on beautiful, luxury furnished apartments — with or without any tricks :)