Winter 2026-2027: why you should open your bookings right now
In the middle of July, the ski season feels a long way off. That calendar misjudgement is exactly what costs Alpine owners the most. Winter's highest-earning stays — Christmas, New Year, February half-term — are booked in summer, often six months ahead. Here is how to structure your season opening.
The winter booking window opens in July
Across our properties in Savoie and Haute-Savoie, close to a third of all December-to-February nights are booked between July and September. The median lead time for a Christmas stay exceeds 140 days; for New Year, 160. The reason is simple: large families, groups of friends and international guests — British, Dutch, Scandinavian — lock in their leave and their flights well before autumn. A calendar that stays closed in July is invisible to them. Worse, it gathers no data: the platforms learn nothing about your property, and your ranking suffers precisely when demand peaks. Opening early means capturing the best stays before your competitors do.
Opening early does not mean underselling
The standard objection is a fair one: by opening six months ahead, aren't you giving up on last-minute price rises? Not if you set a high floor rate. The right method is to open winter with ambitious pricing — at the top of last year's range, uplifted by 4 to 7 % — then adjust it downwards only, and marginally, if your pace of bookings falls behind in October. Early bookers are not price-sensitive: they are buying a date, not a bargain. The real risk is not selling too cheaply, but watching your premium weeks go to the neighbour who did open their calendar.
The season settings to lock in before September
A successful season opening comes down to a handful of parameters. Start with minimum stays: seven nights Saturday-to-Saturday over school holidays, five nights in January, three nights in shoulder season. Then fix your check-in days on high-demand weeks to avoid unsellable calendar gaps. Switch your cancellation policy to strict beyond sixty days: distant bookings need protection. Finally, verify your extra charges — cleaning, tourist tax, pets, cot — before they are frozen into hundreds of reservations. And refresh your photos: a listing showing summer in December converts poorly.
How SmartStay runs your winter opening
From July onwards, we open your calendars across every platform with a rate grid built from your past performance and the demand observed in your resort. We then track a single indicator: the pace of bookings, week by week, against the same date last year. Every gap triggers an adjustment — rate, minimum stay or arrival window — rather than a reflex price cut in November. The result: Christmas and February weeks fill at rates that last-minute selling would never have reached, and your season revenue is secured before the first snowfall.
Get a revenue estimate for your property this winter →