Minimum stays, explained

The rule itself

Every unit has its own minimum stay, and every season has its own minimum too, and the number that actually applies on a given arrival date is whichever of those two is longer. Every apartment's own minimum is two nights — short, because an apartment let is a normal short let most of the year. The whole house's own minimum is longer, at three nights, because a changeover of the entire building is worth doing for more than a night or two even outside the busy months.

The busiest season and the one with a real minimum. Five nights, because a Tuesday-to-Thursday let in July leaves two unsellable nights on either side of it and the rate would have to carry them.

So the rule is not "the season decides" or "the unit decides" — it is whichever number is larger, checked fresh for the date being asked about. That single sentence is the whole of what the booking page does whenever it prints a minimum; the table below works it out for every combination that actually exists.

Why summer's own minimum is the longest on the calendar

Take the worked example on the rates page: the The Parlour Apartment, arriving 5 July 2027, a Monday, for five nights. A guest who asked for only the apartment's own minimum — two nights — arriving the same day would want to leave on 7 July 2027, a Wednesday. The calendar refuses it in summer, not because the apartment is taken, but because the season's own minimum is five nights: whatever nights are left over on either side of a short gap in the middle of a week are not really sellable on their own, not to a weekend arrival and not to another short midweek stay. The minimum exists so that the rate on the price list is a rate for nights the house can actually fill, rather than an average that quietly assumes gaps it cannot sell.