Table of Contents
Background
Rebooking reservations for the "same time" next year is complicated by the fact that about every 6 years, the calendar includes a "leap week", an extra week, so those years include 53 weeks rather than 52. See the Wikipedia article on ISO week dates for more techincal information about how this works.
This 53-week year creates a situation that requires reservations to shift forward by a week at some point during or immediately after that year in order to maintain weekly reservation consistency over many years. Exactly when and where on your calendar you insert that week will determine how the rebooking process will work for your business.
In essence this is resetting the system every time a 53-week year comes around. On normal 52-week years, when you rebook for next year, the reservation will usually float "backwards" 1 day (or potentially 2 days when leap years come into play). The Rebooking Settings allow you to configure when/where on your calendar to insert this extra week, to reset the rebooking cycle.
rezStream Cloud now offers 3 options for handling this situation.
Accessing the Rebooking Settings
The Rebooking Settings can be accessed in 2 ways.
- In the Config section the Rebooking Settings are located in the Your Business group of settings.
- Via the Settings command button on the Rebook Reservation view.
On the Rebooking Settings screen, you have a single option to configure where you want to insert the Extra Week on (or around) 53-week years. On the right hand side of the screen is a Preview area where you can plug in reservation Example Dates to see how those dates would be rebooked using the chosen Extra Week option.
Option 1 - Start of the Year
Out of the box, the Start of the Year option is the default option enabled in rezStream Cloud. With this option enabled, when rebooking into a 53-week year, the extra week is inserted at the beginning of the year. So, the first week of the year is skipped, thereby moving every re-booked reservaton for that year forward 1 week.
For example, when rebooking a reservation arriving on Saturday June 1, 2024 (a 52-week year), the arrival date for next year's booking will be Saturday May 31, 2025 (also a 52-week year). Continuing with that example, when rebooking into 2026 (a 53-week year), using the Start of the Year option, the booking will push forward to Saturday June 6, 2026, "resetting" the cycle until the next 53-week year. So, the rebooking cycle for that arrival date would look like this:
- Saturday, June 1, 2024
- Saturday, May 31, 2025
- Saturday, June 6, 2026 (2026 is a 53-week year, shift forward)
- Saturday, June 5, 2027
- Saturday, June 3, 2028
Option 2 - End of the Year
Using the End of the Year option inserts the extra week at the very end of the year, or the 53rd week of the year, in 53-week years. This option allows you to essentially defer resetting of the cycle to the year AFTER the 53-week year.
Using our previous example, those arrival dates over time would look as follows:
- Saturday, June 1, 2024
- Saturday, May 31, 2025
- Saturday, May 30, 2026 (2026 is a 53-week year, but no shift with this option)
- Saturday, June 5, 2027 (the shift forward happens AFTER the 53-week year)
- Saturday, June 3, 2028
Option 3 - Resort (give preference to summer holidays)
The Resort option uses a custom algorithm that ensures the guest who books the week of the 4th of July always gets the week of the 4th of July every time they rebook, and that guest would never depart on the 4th of July (but they may arrive on the 4th). This option also ensures that guests who stay over Memorial Day and Labor Day will also always get those respective holiday's each year.
There is some special logic involved here to make this happen, and while the extra week in the cycle is most often inserted on the week before the 4th of July on 53-week years, that is not always the case.
This option will rebook reservations as shown in this PDF: Handy Resort Rebooking Calendar Showing "Extra Week" Occurrences between 2020-2037.
NOTE: When using this option, because the extra week on 53-week years is often inserted in the middle of the summer (at the end of June, right before the 4th of July week), the guest who books that week may not be able to rebook that week next year and it will be up to you to resolve that situation on those years.
When the guest who is staying in that extra week attempts to rebook for the year AFTER the 53-week year, rezStream Cloud will attempt to rebook them into the previous week which may have already been rebooked by the guest staying the previous week. For example:
- The guest who arrived on Saturday June 20, 2026, will rebook into Saturday June 26, 2027.
- If the guest who arrived on Saturday June 27, 2026 (the extra week on this 53-week year) attempts to rebook for the next year, the system will also attempt to rebook them into Saturday 26, 2027. However, that week will already have been booked by the guest who arrived on Saturday June 20, 2026, so this guest who booked the extra week, may not be able to rebook for 2027.