Rates: Minimum Booking Time (MBT)

In some cases, booking a space for 30 minutes or an hour doesn't make a whole lot of sense, both financially for the Host and practically for the Customer. Large venues often have long events, and so by the time a customer bumps in/out, and runs their event, it's a minimum of 2 to 4 hours.

In the below example where we begin to add in MBT, we've also added in a 5th Tier called 'Standard' which is used for casual bookings.

Rates: Maximum Daily Charge (MDC)

Typically, Spaces come with some sort of discount when it comes to booking for a full day, referred to as a 'Day Rate'. The problem with Day Rates is that they are loosely defined, and can change from space to space. Questions and issues that come up include:

• What constitutes a day? Is it from 9am to 5pm?
• What happens if I only need it from 5pm till midnight, is that still a day?
• If someone only needs it from 9am to 5pm, and they get a day rate, can someone else use it from 5pm?
• Why does the day rate calculation seem more expensive for a Community booking, compared to a Commercial?

With this in mind, SpacetoCo created the 'Maximum Daily Charge', which is defined simply as a quantity of hours.

So, if a space has an MDC of 10hrs, and its price is $50/hr for Community, and $100/hr for Commercial, then the most a customer would pay is determined by the simple calculation of Rate x MDC.

MDC simply caps the amount of money a user can spend in a 24 hour period. It does NOT block the user from booking more than the MDC.

Example scenarios (Rate = $50/hr, MDC = 10hrs):

• If a Guest books 5 hrs, they pay $250
• If a Guest books 10hrs, they pay $500
• If a Guest books 12hrs, they pay $500
• If a Guest books 16hrs, they pay $500

Want to know the benchmark on how much you should be charging your community venue should be charging?

👉Download this 2024 free pricing guide here

Rates: Discounts

In some situations, Customers may need to have their Rate reduced on top of what they'd normally pay. Using a Discount Code is the perfect mechanism for this, and provides the following benefits:

• Discount Codes are hidden from public view and can be created as one-off codes unique to each customer, e.g. BUSHFIRE_RELIEF
• Using a Discount Code (instead of applying a lower rate to a booking) allows you to measure over time the 'value' of discount given per space, customer type, tier, date, etc.
• Bookings can be tracked against Discount Codes, giving visibility on what bookings have taken advantage of the discount, or if they have been misused.
• Discount Codes can be easily paused, providing a more nimble and scalable way of providing price variances.

There are 3 options for creating Discount Codes, and the table below shows examples of each:

Use case example: A Guest would like to hold a Bush Fire Relief Concert and has been granted a discount of 100% for a one-off event. No matter what Type of customer this Guest is, or what Tier they fall under, they can be given the code BUSHFIRE_RELIEF which comes with a 100% discount. When the booking is created, the code is simply applied to this booking.

At the end of the month, the Host is able to see on their report that a discount of $X was provided to the Guest, and the Code was used for just the 1 booking.

Rates: Peak/Off-Peak & Weekend Pricing

Adding Peak/Off-Peak, or Weekend rates can end up turning your Fees & Charges schedule into a jumbled mess.

To explain what we mean by this, we've provided two scenarios below on how the customer interacts with your Space with and without this complexity:

With Peak/Off-Peak & Weekend Pricing:

"Hey Customer, thanks for stopping by! Before we get started, let me just explain how our pricing works: If you're booking during the day, from 9am to 5pm, then we charge $25/hr for most events and $50/hr for commercial use…However, if you book from 5pm to midnight, but only from Monday to Friday, and Saturday mornings, then we charge you an additional $5/hr for most events, and $7.50 for commercial use. And if it's a weekend, then we use our function rate, which is $800 for the day on Saturdays (from 2pm to midnight), and $600 on a Sunday (you can have it all day)."

Without Peak/Off-Peak & Weekend Pricing:

"Hey Customer, thanks for stopping by! To book this space, it's $25/hr for most events and $50/hr for commercial use."

And this is without considering that some Local Governments add in Public Holiday surcharges. If you were to mix into this another couple of Tiers (Government and Not-for-Profit), all of a sudden you have a very messy schedule that's extremely hard for anyone to follow.

So how do you solve the need for different pricing at different times of the week?

The question comes back to the user journey and overall customer experience. Generally speaking, the use case for booking a space at night, or on weekends, is completely different from using the Space Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm.

Because of this, our recommendation is to create a separate child space. Why?

• The description of the space can be adjusted to suit the audience. If it's turning into a function space, then the description can be written in a way that is more appropriate for customers holding larger events
• The minimum booking time can be adjusted to suit the 'function' requirements
• The pricing can be adjusted, independently and without complicating things for the user
• The rules can be tailored to a function
• Additional items for hire like chairs, AV and security can be tailored
• SpaceProtect (Bond) requirements may be different
• Space Use will be different, and it's important to distinguish this to help with search results

So what does this look like in practice? Below are some examples of how a typical Town Hall could be handled with separated Weekday and Weekend Pricing:

The Town Hall: Weekday (6am to 6pm, Monday to Friday)

The Town Hall: Function (6am to Midnight, Saturday & Sunday)

Setting it out in this way allows for the Town Hall to be booked on a weekend for a minimum spend of $450. As the space is open for 18hrs (6am to Midnight), the most a customer could spend would be $900.

Regular Customers would still have access to the Space, however, they would fall under the same pricing as a Casual Customer for the weekend only. This can be adjusted if Regular Customers still need to access the space on a weekend, either by adjusting Rates or providing a Discount Code.

Woah! You've made it this far.

Do you need help with sorting out your fees and charges?

How should local governments structure fees and charges for venue bookings?

An hourly-rate model built around a small number of customer tiers, typically Community, Commercial, Government and Not-for-Profit, keeps pricing simple for customers while still allowing different rates for different customer types.

What's the difference between a casual and a regular customer for venue bookings?

Casual customers book once or a few times a year, usually spend under $1,000 annually, and book for private one-off events. Regular customers book at least monthly, spend anywhere from $1,000 to $20,000 a year, and typically run a business or community group.

What is a Maximum Daily Charge and how does it work?

A Maximum Daily Charge caps the total a customer pays in a 24-hour period, calculated as the hourly rate multiplied by the capped number of hours. It doesn't prevent a customer from booking more hours, it just stops the price from increasing past that cap.

How do you handle peak, off-peak and weekend pricing without making the fee schedule confusing?

Rather than layering multiple time-based surcharges onto one space, the recommended approach is to create a separate child space for weekend or function use, with its own description, pricing, minimum booking time and rules, so each version of the space stays simple for the customer to understand.