Alternative and Public Holidays

Public holidays are different from regular days — you might charge a higher rate, run a reduced timetable, or be closed entirely. Booking Phoenix's Alternative Holidays system lets you mark specific dates as holidays and have rooms automatically apply different rules on those dates without rebuilding your seasons. This guide covers configuring the holidays themselves and using the per-room overrides.

Opening alternative holidays

Go to Settings → Alternative Holidays. You'll see a list of every holiday entry with its name, date(s), and the rooms it applies to.

Adding a holiday

1. Click Create.
2. Give it a name (e.g. "Christmas Day", "Boxing Day", "Anzac Day").
3. Set the date. For one-off holidays use a single date; for recurring use a date range or recurrence rule.
4. Optionally restrict to specific rooms — leave blank to apply to all rooms.
5. Save.

The date is now flagged as a holiday. By itself this doesn't change behaviour — you also need to enable the override on each room that should respect it.

Enabling the room-level override

For pricing or capacity overrides on holidays:

1. Open the room edit modal.
2. On the Players tab, toggle Override for Alternative Holidays on. New player-limit fields appear — enter the values you want on holidays.
3. On the Pricing tab, you'll see a similar override toggle — turn it on and enter holiday prices.
4. Save.

From now on, when a customer books that room on a flagged holiday date, the override values apply automatically. Reports show holiday bookings as separate line items so you can track holiday revenue.

Closing on a holiday

If you close entirely on a date (e.g. Christmas Day), you have two clean options:

• Block all slots for the date — on the calendar, select the day and use the bulk-block action. Faster than touching each room individually. See Holding or Blocking Slots.
• Create a "Closed" season — a dedicated season covering the holiday with no slots in it. Cleaner long-term if you have a recurring closure (e.g. always closed Christmas through New Year).

The Alternative Holidays system is for dates where you're open with different rules, not for full closures.

Reduced timetable on a holiday

If you run a different timetable on a holiday (e.g. shorter hours), the cleanest approach is a separate season covering just the holiday with the slots you want, rather than overriding individual slots. See Setting Up a Schedule.

Common patterns

"Holiday surcharge" without rebuilding seasons

Add an entry for the holiday, enable the pricing override on each affected room, set higher rates. Customers see the higher price when they pick that date. No need to maintain a separate "Holiday" season.

Fewer players allowed on a holiday

If staffing is reduced on holidays and you can't run full-capacity groups, lower the per-slot maximum on the Players tab override. Slot availability decreases automatically on flagged dates.

Per-room holidays

Restricting a holiday to specific rooms is useful when only some rooms are affected — e.g. a noisier room is closed on a public holiday for neighbour relations, but your other rooms run as normal. Add the holiday with a room filter; only those rooms apply the override.

Common pitfalls

• Holiday added but no override. The most common surprise. Adding a date to Alternative Holidays does nothing until each room enables the override toggle on its Players or Pricing tab. Check both.
• Forgot a recurring holiday. Get into the habit of adding the next year's public holidays in early January. Most countries publish them well in advance.
• Mixed up "closed" and "different rules". If you're closed, block the slots or use a Closed season. If you're open with different rules, use Alternative Holidays. Mixing these confuses your reports.

Maintenance

Once a year, review the Alternative Holidays list:

• Remove holidays from past dates that don't recur (they're harmless to leave but clutter the list).
• Add the next year's public holidays in one sitting — saves ad-hoc scrambles.
• Confirm each room's override toggle is in the state you expect.