How to price your rooms for Diwali and New Year
Festive nights fill some towns at almost any price and leave others quiet, so the right price starts with knowing which kind of town yours is this year. Put the dates in your calendar months ahead, set prices before the first bookings arrive, then move them as your rooms fill and as the hotels around you move theirs. In 2026 Diwali falls on Sunday 8 November, Christmas Day on a Friday and New Year's Eve on a Thursday.
Also called: festive season pricing, dynamic pricing, revenue management, peak season rates.
A OneHorizyn guide. Updated .
The dates to plan for
- Diwali: Sunday 8 November 2026, with Govardhan Puja on Monday 9 November and Bhai Duj on Wednesday 11 November, as the Government of India's holiday list for 2026 gives them. Look at the nights before and after too: last year's bookings show which of them filled for you.
- Christmas Day: Friday 25 December 2026, so the weekend after it is a long one.
- New Year's Eve: Thursday 31 December 2026, with New Year's Day on the Friday and the weekend straight after.
Your own town has dates of its own as well: a fair, a festival, a wedding season. Add them to the same calendar.
Set your prices before the first bookings
The first bookings for festive nights come in weeks or months before them. If your price for those nights is still your usual one when they arrive, the first rooms sell for less than they could have. Look at last year: the day the first booking came in for Diwali or New Year's Eve is the day this year's prices need to be ready by.
- 1List the nights: the festival itself, and the nights around it that filled for you last year.
- 2Set an opening price for each, above a usual weekend's, before the first booking for them arrives.
- 3Decide in advance the points at which you will raise it, such as when half the rooms are sold, and by how much.
- 4Check those nights every week, and more often in the last fortnight.
The nightly price at which GST on a room in India goes from 5% to 18%, as Booking.com tells its Indian partners. A festive price just above it costs the guest far more in tax than one at it.
Watch the hotels around you
What the hotels near you charge for the same nights is the clearest sign of how busy the town will be. When they raise their prices, or stop showing rooms, the town is filling.
- Compare like with like: the same night, a similar room, the same cancellation terms, and tax in or out on both.
- A competitor that drops its price close to the date may have rooms left over. Find out why before you follow.
- Look at what they offer as well as the price: a Diwali dinner or a New Year's Eve party is part of what a guest compares.
Rules that keep the nights full
- A minimum stay: two nights over New Year's Eve fills the night after it as well. Drop it near the date if the second night hasn't sold.
- Cancellation terms: a deposit, or an earlier last day to cancel free of charge, protects a night you can sell only once.
- A package: the room with a festive dinner or a party, priced as one, which guests compare less directly with a booking site's price.
- Groups: hold rooms for a wedding or a family party until a set date, and release them to sale if they aren't confirmed by then.
Booking.com warns that a minimum stay can leave short gaps no one can book: with a three-night minimum, two free nights between bookings aren't shown to someone searching for two. Its extranet has rules that open such nights by themselves.
Afterwards, write down what happened
When the nights are over, note the day each was first booked, the price each sold at, and what the hotels around you charged. Next year's prices start from that note, not from memory.
