How to Set Up Hourly Booking in WpRentals
What hourly booking means in WpRentals
Hourly booking allows you to rent a listing by the hour instead of by the day. This option is useful for spaces or items that are booked for short periods, such as offices, studios, meeting rooms, or equipment.
When hourly booking is enabled, the booking form and pricing fields adjust to support hourly reservations. You can define the hourly price, discounted hourly prices for longer bookings, weekend pricing, minimum booking time, business hours, and custom prices for selected dates.
How to enable hourly booking
Go to Theme Options > Booking Configuration > Form General Settings.
In this section, you can choose how booking works across your website. This is where you enable hourly booking for all listings or allow owners to choose between hourly and daily booking for each listing.
Booking type options explained
WpRentals includes these booking options:
- Per day for all listings
This keeps the standard daily booking system for every listing. - Per hour for all listings
All listings will use hourly booking. - Mix: Owner chooses price per hour or by day
Each listing owner can choose, for each listing, whether that listing is booked by the day or by the hour.
A listing cannot use both booking types at the same time. It must be either daily or hourly.
How to set hourly prices for a listing
To configure hourly booking for a specific listing, go to:
User Dashboard > My Listings > Edit Listing > Price Settings
When hourly booking is enabled, the listing can use the following price fields:
- Price per hour
- Price per hour for 7h+
- Price per hour for 30h+
- Weekend price
- Cleaning fee
- City fee
- Minimum hours of booking
- Early Bird Discount
- Business Hours
These fields are managed from the front end listing editor.
How business hours work
Business Hours define the time interval available for hourly reservations.
You can set these hours from the listing Price Settings area. Visitors will only be able to select booking slots within the business hours you define for that listing.
Hourly bookings are limited to one day at a time, with a maximum span of 24 hours.
How to add custom hourly prices
If you want to charge different hourly prices for specific dates, use the Price Adjustments section in the front end listing editor.
From there, you can select dates and add custom prices for those periods. This is useful for holidays, weekends, peak dates, or special events.
Control Availability Format:
- Change AM/PM or 24-hour format via Theme Options → Booking Configuration → Calendar Settings → Language for Datepicker.
- The booking form does not support a direct AM/PM toggle.
- NOTE: There is no AM/PM control possible for the booking form.
Using hourly booking with Object Rental
If you rent items instead of accommodations, you can use hourly booking together with Object Rental.
Go to Theme Options > Booking Configuration > Guest Selector Settings and select Object Rental.
When Object Rental is enabled:
- The guest selector is removed from the booking form
- The wording changes from night to day for daily bookings
- Hourly booking is still controlled separately from the booking type settings
This setup is useful for bookable objects or spaces where the number of guests is not relevant.
Important limitations to keep in mind
Please keep these points in mind when using hourly booking:
- Hourly bookings can only be made within a single day.
- A listing cannot be both hourly and daily at the same time.
- The All in One Calendar is designed for daily bookings, not as a full hourly booking management calendar.
- Search by check-in and check-out is mainly designed for daily availability, not detailed hourly interval filtering.
These limitations are important when deciding whether hourly booking is the right fit for your website.
How iCal works with hourly booking
You can import hourly availability by iCal only from platforms that support hourly booking in their calendar feed.
To add an iCal feed, go to:
User Dashboard > My Listings > Edit Listing > Calendar
A few important details:
- The listing must be published before you can manage the iCal feed correctly.
- The iCal feed is managed from the front end dashboard.
- If you want a listing to stop appearing in date search results for one day, the full day must be blocked from hour 1 to hour 23.
By default, iCal synchronization runs every 3 hours.
This comprehensive guide outlines the functionality and limitations of the hourly booking system within WpRentals.