Swims, packages, and pricing

The pricing model is the part of LakeBooking that's most worth understanding properly before you go live. Get it right and the rest of the dashboard makes intuitive sense; get it wrong and you'll fight conversions for weeks.

The model in one sentence

A swim is a place on the water. A package bundles one or more swims with everything you sell with them. Anglers book a package; the price is calculated from the package's billing units, pricing rules, and any discount or promotion you've set.

If that's clear, you can skip the next few sections. If not, read on.

Swims

A swim is one bookable spot on your lake (a peg, a stand, a pitch). Each swim has:

• A name and a description.
• A pin on the lake map, with an outline of its fishing area.
• A cover photo and a gallery.

That's all a swim holds. How many anglers, non-fishing guests and rods it takes, the fishing type and the rules are all set on the package, so the same swim can be sold differently by different packages.

A swim by itself isn't sold to anglers. It's a building block. The thing they'll see in search results and pay for is a package that references one or more swims.

Packages: the bookable SKU

A package is what an angler actually books. The dashboard lets you compose it like a recipe:

• Swims: the swims the package can be booked on. The angler picks which ones (and how many) when booking.
• Fishing rules (the Rules step): Included anglers per swim, Included non-fishing guests per swim and Included rods per swim (1 to 8 rods), the Fishing type (carp, coarse, predator, mixed or other), the fish species, and the Fish retention policy (Catch & keep or Catch & release only).
• Rules: your own written rules for the package, or the lake's rules (Use lake rules).
• Accommodation (optional): a lodge, cottage, B&B, hotel, camping ground and more.
• Billing units: the lengths the package can be booked in, each with its own price and check-in times (see below).
• Pricing rules: seasonal or weekday overrides and multipliers on a billing unit's price.
• A discount: a percentage off stays of at least a minimum length.
• A promotion: a percentage off the package's next 5, 10, 15 or 20 bookings. There's no code to type. While the promotion has bookings left, every angler sees the reduced price.
• Additional anglers, guests and rods: whether the package sells more than each swim includes, how many, and at what price.
• Extras: boat hire, catering, or rentable equipment such as rods, unhooking mats and scales. Extras are defined once at lake level (Lake → Extras, with a name, description, photos and price per charging period) and offered on the packages you choose as optional add-ons at booking, with optional per-package price overrides.
• A package gallery: photos that show this package in particular (the cabin, the swim from the bank, the rod rental shed).

Simple lakes will run one package per swim ("Day Ticket, Swim 1"). More elaborate operations will define several packages side by side:

• "Day Ticket Swim 1" (carp, 12 h, no extras)
• "Weekend Carp Retreat Swims 4 to 6" (carp, 48 h, with a cabin)
• "Catfish Week" (predator, 168 h, boat hire offered as an extra)
• "Family Stay" (mixed, 48 h, with a cottage and 2 non-fishing guests included per swim)

The angler picks the package, a date, a session length and a check-in time, then the swims, sees the price and books. The flexibility lives in how you compose packages, the SKU that does the heavy lifting.

Billing units

A billing unit is a block of time the package can be sold in, with its own price. The dashboard also calls it a charging period; the two names mean the same thing. The lengths are fixed (6, 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, 96, 120, 144 and 168 hours), and a package has at most one billing unit of each length. Common ones:

Billing units have no names in the dashboard (a unit is simply "24h"), so the names above are conventions. A single package can have several billing units configured at once.

Longer stays chain billing units. An angler can book one unit or several back to back, up to the package's Longest stay. A 72 h stay on a package that sells 24 h units is three of them. When several chains fit the same length and check-in time, the angler gets the cheapest.

Each billing unit has its own price. A 48 h unit isn't automatically twice the price of a 24 h one. It's whatever you set. This is intentional, because hosts often want the overnighter slightly more expensive per-hour than the weekend (changeover labour is the same either way). Prices are per swim, so an angler who books two swims pays for two.

Each billing unit has its own check-in times. Under Check-in times you list the exact times (HH:MM) the unit can start, such as 06:00 and 18:00 for a 12 h day-ticket, or only 14:00 for a 24 h overnighter. Anglers can only start at one of those times, and a unit with no check-in time can't be booked. In a chain, each unit starts at one of its own check-in times, right where the previous one ends, so a 12 h unit sold at 06:00 and 18:00 can run back to back around the clock.

Seasonal pricing, discounts, and promos

These three tools combine to give you fine control without complicating the angler's view.

Seasonal pricing. Each billing unit can carry Pricing rules. A rule is an Override (a fixed price) or a Multiplier (a factor on the base price), for one or more date ranges, some days of the week, or both. Tick Repeat every year for a season that comes back, such as peak summer (July/August), Easter weekends or off-season winter. For weekend prices, use the days of the week. Each unit of a stay is priced by the day it starts on, and the angler always sees the effective price for the dates they pick.

Discounts. One discount per package, applied automatically at checkout. You set a Minimum duration (12, 24, 48 or 72 hours) and a percentage from 5 to 50%, and every booking at least that long gets it. For example, "10% off stays of 48 hours or more".

Promos. A package-level automatic discount for the next 5, 10, 15 or 20 bookings, from 5 to 50%. You set the count and the percentage, and it applies by itself until it runs out (a booking counts once it's confirmed). Great for launch pushes and quiet-season boosts; there are no codes for anglers to type.

They don't stack. When a discount and a promotion both apply to a booking, the angler gets the larger of the two. Both reduce the package price (the session plus any additional anglers and guests), never additional rods or extras.

Additional guests, anglers, and rods

The anglers, guests and rods each swim includes are set on the package's Rules step; the charges below come on top of them.

Under Additional charges, a package can sell more than each swim includes, so the lead booker can bring their friends:

• Allow additional guests (non-fishing companions): an on/off switch, Maximum additional non-fishing guests and Price per additional guest.
• Allow additional anglers (extra anglers on the same swim): an on/off switch, Maximum additional anglers and Price per additional angler.
• Allow additional rods: an on/off switch, Maximum additional rods and Price per additional rod.

The maximum counts per swim booked, and you set the price for each of the package's billing units. Guests also ride free in any included angler places the party leaves empty.

The angler sees additional rods and extras as their own lines in the price details; additional anglers and guests are part of the session price. Everything adds up to the total, which splits into the booking fee and the balance due at the lake.

Migrating an existing price list

Most hosts come in with an existing price list. The good news is that LakeBooking can model almost any sensible structure. The bad news is that a few patterns need a translation step.

"Per angler per day" pricing. LakeBooking prices per swim, not per angler. To translate it, set Included anglers per swim to 1, give each billing unit your per-angler rate, and switch on Allow additional anglers with the same rate as the Price per additional angler.

"Per rod" pricing. Same idea, using Included rods per swim and Allow additional rods.

"Members vs non-members" pricing. The platform doesn't have member-only listings or promo codes yet, so run the listing at the non-member price and handle member sessions off-platform (or talk to us about your setup, since syndicate support is on our radar).

"Negotiable" pricing. Don't. The platform requires a price at checkout. Pricing that requires a phone call is the problem LakeBooking exists to solve.

What good pricing looks like

A few patterns that consistently work:

• Sit at or just under the regional median. Anglers don't filter ruthlessly on price; deeply-cheap lakes get mistrusted ("what's wrong with it?"). Slightly under, with strong photos and fast replies, converts best.
• Price overnighters honestly against day-tickets. A 24h price of "exactly 2 × the 12h day-ticket" looks lazy; anglers spot it. Mid-week overnighters work at ~1.5× the day-ticket; weekend overnighters at 2.0×.
• Don't underprice your carp weeks. Hosts new to the platform consistently underprice their longest billing unit. The angler base for 168 h sessions is small, dedicated, and not price-sensitive within 10 to 15%.
• Run one promo at launch. A 5 to 10% discount on your first batch of bookings builds review velocity and gives you something concrete to announce.

See also

• Calendar and bookings: how packages interact with the calendar.
• Payments, payouts, and taxes: where the money goes after a booking.
• Glossary: package, billing unit, charging period, booking fee, remaining balance, commission.