Booking Limits: Occupancy Caps, Stay Lengths and Party Sizes

A site map makes capacity look simple. Twenty cabins and thirty unpowered sites is fifty stays for the same night, and at fifty the park is full.

In practice, a booking has to clear three separate questions before it is safe to accept. How many people will that put on site. How long are they staying. And does their party suit the area they have picked. A park can be well short of full on the site map and still be past what its amenities can carry, or three weeks into a stay it never meant to sell online, or fitting a couple into a six berth cabin on the busiest weekend of the year.

Camper BMS gives you a limit for each of those questions, set at whichever of three levels makes sense: the whole park, an individual area, or an individual site. You set them once. The park-wide guest limit is enforced everywhere a stay can be created or grown, and the stay length and party size limits shape what guests can book for themselves online and through the API.

Limit 1: how many people are on site

The broadest control is a single number under Settings > Bookings & Checkout > Booking Limits: the maximum number of guests who can be staying on any one night, across every accommodation type you offer.

Once a night reaches that number, it stops accepting new bookings everywhere. It does not matter that three powered sites and a cabin are still sitting empty. If your ceiling is people, people are what get counted.

A stay is only accepted when every night of it has room for the whole party. A four night booking with one full night in the middle is refused outright, so you are not left with a group that has to move out for a night and come back.

A worked example

Say you set the cap to 25. On a given night, twelve guests are booked into cabins and a family of four is on a powered site, so 16 of the 25 places are used and 9 are left.

• A group of six can still book. Six fits inside the nine remaining places.
• A group of ten cannot. When they search dates that include this night, they are told no sites are available.
• A couple looking at a five night stay that includes this night is fine, as long as every other night in their range also has room for two.

Who a park-wide cap is designed for

The guest cap is built for parks whose real ceiling is headcount rather than pitch count:

• Shared facilities. Amenities blocks, septic capacity, a pool, a camp kitchen, or a drinking water supply with a practical limit well under a full house.
• Permit or licence conditions. If the number you have been given is expressed as a headcount, you can set that number as the cap and have it enforced at the point of booking instead of checked after the fact.
• Evacuation and emergency planning. If your plan is written around a maximum number of people on site, the booking system can hold that number.
• Mixed accommodation. Where cabins, powered sites, unpowered sites and glamping tents each sleep a different number of people, site count tells you very little about how many people are actually on the ground.

Limit 2: how long a stay can be

Stay length is controlled from both ends, and both are set per area so your cabins and your long-stay paddock do not have to behave the same way.

Maximum nights

The longest stay bookable in an area. There is a park-wide default that new areas start from, so you are not configuring every area from scratch, and each area can then be tuned individually.

There are two quite different reasons to set a maximum. It keeps short-stay inventory turning over through peak season instead of one guest sitting on a prime site for a month. And it draws a line under what you are willing to sell as a self-service booking at all: past a certain length, a stay may suit a lease or an enquiry better than three months booked online in a single transaction.

Minimum stay by date

At the other end, a minimum number of nights that applies over a chosen date range on a given area. Your peak periods can carry a longer minimum than the rest of the year without you having to remember to switch it on and off: three nights minimum over Easter and the Christmas fortnight, one night for the rest of the year, set once and dated.

Because it runs off dates instead of a switch you have to flick, the minimum lifts itself when the period ends. There is no lingering three night minimum quietly turning away a Tuesday booking in February.

Limit 3: how big a party can be

The third limit is about fit. An area that sleeps two should not be sold to a family of eight, and a six berth cabin should not be the only thing a solo traveller is shown on a busy weekend.

Minimum and maximum guests per area

Each area carries a party size range, and an area is only offered to a guest whose party fits inside it. A deluxe cabin area set to 2 to 6 guests, and a couples-only glamping area set to 2 to 2, filter themselves out of the wrong searches automatically.

The minimum matters as much as the maximum. It is what stops your largest, best-earning accommodation being taken by a single guest.

Overriding a single site

Sometimes a single site does not match its neighbours. A cramped powered site sitting in an area set to 2 to 6 guests can be capped at 4 on its own, without changing the area and without creating a whole new category just to hold one site. The site's range sits inside its area's: the area's range decides which searches it appears in, and the site's range decides who is offered that site within it. Everything else about the area stays as it is.

How the three levels fit together

Reading the same limits from the other direction:

• Park. Maximum guests per night across the whole property, plus the default maximum nights that new areas inherit.
• Area. Maximum nights, minimum and maximum guests, and minimum stay by date range.
• Site. A tighter guest range than the area's, for the one site that is different.

The narrower setting wins. An area's maximum nights overrides the park default, and a site's guest range narrows its area's.

What a guest sees

Limits do their work at the front of the booking flow, while a guest is still picking dates and a site. The aim is that a stay which cannot go ahead drops out of the options before anyone gets as far as the booking form.

• A night the park is full on people shows as unavailable in the date picker, across every area at once.
• Areas that cannot take the party size are left out of the search results entirely.
• Date ranges shorter than the minimum stay, or longer than the maximum nights, are not offered for that area.
• The site list, the booking form, the API, booking extensions, waitlist offers, ballot invitations and the iCal availability feed all read the same limits, so a night you have closed is closed on all of them.

Checkout holds count while they are live, too, so two guests are not both taking the last place at the same moment.

What staff can still do

What holds on the booking page is not always what you want at the front desk, so there is some give in it for staff.

• An explicit override. Staff can exceed the park occupancy limit when creating a booking by ticking Exceed the occupancy limit. The override is noted on the booking's history.
• Changes are not retrospective. Raising or lowering a limit affects new bookings from that moment. Bookings already on the books stand.
• Leases are counted. Long-term tenants count towards the nightly guest limit through the Number of occupants field on each lease, which defaults to the number of tenants on the agreement. Your permanents are part of the headcount, not invisible to it.

Two details to keep in mind

The guest limit counts nights, not days. The departure morning is not counted, so a guest leaving Saturday morning does not hold a place on Saturday night. Back to back stays hand over cleanly instead of colliding on changeover day.

Bookings imported from an external channel carry no guest count. They occupy their site, but they do not draw down the park guest cap, because the party size does not come across with them. If a meaningful share of your bookings arrive from other channels, set the cap with that in mind.

Setting the numbers

There is no single correct set of limits. Each one is easier to pick if you start from whatever actually constrains you, instead of a round number that sounds about right.

For the occupancy cap, work from whatever runs out first: showers and toilets, the load your septic system is rated for, the number on your licence, or the camp kitchen on a wet January evening. For maximum nights, work from the point at which you would rather be writing a lease than taking a booking. For minimum stay, work from the changeover cost of a one night stay on your busiest weekend. For party size, work from what each area is genuinely set up to sleep.

Then set them once and let the booking system hold them on the nights you are not there to.

Common questions

What is a park-wide occupancy limit?

A single number covering your entire park: the most people who can be staying on any one night, across every accommodation type. Once a night reaches that number it stops accepting new bookings everywhere, whatever kind of site is still free.

Can I set a different maximum stay length for each area?

Yes. There is a park-wide default maximum nights that new areas start from, and each area can then be changed individually.

How do minimum and maximum guests per area work?

Each area accepts a party size range, and is only offered to a guest whose party fits inside it. Areas that cannot take the party size are left out of the search results entirely.

Can I set a longer minimum stay over peak periods?

Yes. Minimum stay by date applies a minimum number of nights over a chosen date range, so you can require three nights over Easter and the Christmas fortnight while leaving one night for the rest of the year.

Can one site have a different guest limit to the rest of its area?

Yes. An individual site can carry a tighter guest range than its area, without changing the area or moving the site into its own category. The area's range decides which searches it appears in, and the site's range decides who is offered that site within it.

Can staff book past the occupancy limit?

Yes, deliberately. When creating a booking, staff can tick Exceed the occupancy limit, and the override is noted on the booking's history. Guests booking online cannot exceed the limit.

What happens to bookings already made if I change a limit?

Nothing. Raising or lowering a limit affects new bookings from that moment onward. Bookings already on the books stand.