Holiday Camp Multi Day Discount and Sibling Structures That Fill Weeks Without Cutting Margin

Every holiday camp multi day discount looks harmless on its own. Then a parent books three kids for four days each, and the multi-day rate, the sibling discount and an early-bird code all land on the same booking. That family ends up paying well under your day rate, and nobody decided that on purpose.

This post gives you three ways to structure multi-day and sibling discounts. Each one runs through the same camp week, so you can see the income difference. It finishes with a setup checklist to work through before bookings open.

It assumes you've already set your day rate. If you haven't, start with our guide to summer holiday camp pricing per day and come back.

Decide what the discount is for

A camp discount should do one of two jobs.

1. Move bookings from part-week to full week. Full-week kids make grouping, staffing and the run sheet easier. They're also income locked in early.
2. Keep siblings together with you. A family with two or three kids is weighing your total against cheaper options for one of them, or keeping one home.

Being cheaper isn't a job. If your January weeks sell out at full price, a discount on those weeks is margin you've handed back for nothing. If your weeks run half full, a discount might be the reason a family books. It also might not move anything at all.

So before you pick a structure, write down two things:

• Your ceiling. This is the most you'll ever take off a single child-day, with all rules combined. For the worked example below, we'll assume a ceiling of 15%. That's an assumption to show the maths, not a recommendation.
• Your stacking rule. Decide whether discounts combine, and in what order.

Each structure below is a different answer to those two questions.

The worked example: one camp week, three discount structures

Here's the camp week we'll use. These figures are for illustration only.

That puts 40 of the 180 child-days with an additional sibling: 30 from full-week bookings and 10 from part-week. With no discounts at all, the week brings in 180 × $70 = $12,600. That's the baseline.

For now, assume the booking mix stays the same under every structure. We'll come back to whether a discount actually brings in extra bookings. Swap in your own day rate and mix. The comparison will hold, but the dollars will change.

Structure 1: stacked percentage discounts

This is a setup we see a lot. In our example, we assume it takes 10% off for booking the full week and 10% off for each additional sibling, and the two stack.

Under those assumptions, the discounts cost $980, about 7.8% of the $12,600 baseline.

What's good: it's easy to advertise. Families understand a percentage off the week and a percentage off siblings straight away.

What leaks: stacking puts the deepest discount on your most committed families. A full-week sibling gets 20% off, which is well past the 15% ceiling. Add an early-bird code and it climbs again.

Percentages also grow every time you lift the day rate. The discount gets bigger each year without anyone reviewing it.

Structure 2: a flat full-week price and a flat sibling discount

This structure uses dollar amounts instead of percentages. The full week costs $320 instead of $350 at the day rate. Each additional sibling gets $5 off per day.

The discounts cost $800, about 6.3% of the baseline.

A full-week sibling pays $59 a day, which is just under 16% off. That's slightly over the ceiling. Because the amounts are flat, you can see the overshoot on paper and trim it by a dollar before launch.

What's good: it's predictable. A $320 week is a price a parent can compare with other camps, and it only changes when you decide to change it.

What leaks: you have to revisit the numbers each season. A flat $5 is also a much bigger percentage on a half-day rate than on a full day.

Structure 3: best single discount, no stacking

Here a family gets 10% off for the full week or 10% off for a sibling, whichever applies. They never get both.

The discounts cost $770, about 6.1% of the baseline. No child-day ever goes more than 10% under your rate.

What's good: the ceiling is built in, and it's the cheapest of the three.

What leaks: goodwill, sometimes. The parent booking three kids for the full week pays the same daily rate as a parent booking one. Some families will push back. You need to state the rule plainly on the booking page, not explain it at the desk.

The three structures side by side

How many extra bookings a discount has to earn

Every figure above assumes the discount didn't change who booked. The only good reason to discount is that it does. So turn the cost into a target:

Extra child-days needed = discount cost ÷ day rate

• Structure 1: $980 ÷ $70 = 14 extra child-days
• Structure 2: $800 ÷ $70 = about 12 extra child-days
• Structure 3: $770 ÷ $70 = 11 extra child-days

Extra child-days aren't free if they push you over a ratio and you need another coach. If 14 more kids means another group, the target rises by a day's wage. Check your numbers against your holiday camp staffing ratios before you discount your way to the last few places.

The test is simple. Look at last season's full-week share and sibling share, before and after the discount was introduced. If the full-week share didn't move, the discount was a gift, not a lever.

Also look at where the empty places sit. In this example, 20 unsold child-days are worth $1,400 at full rate. If they're mostly Fridays, a Friday-only offer may do more than a blanket week discount.

What it looks like at the sign-in table on drop-off morning

Here's a setup we see a lot. It's 8:15 on Monday, there's a queue at the sign-in table, and a parent says their second child should have had the sibling discount.

They booked the two kids separately, a few days apart, on different phones. The coach running sign-in can't check the booking and can't issue a refund. Meanwhile the queue gets longer. Someone writes the details on a sticky note, and it gets sorted by email on Wednesday, or not at all.

Discounts applied by hand at the desk leak in two ways. They're applied inconsistently, and they go to whoever asks loudest. The fix is to decide the edge cases in writing:

• Does the sibling discount apply across separate bookings?
• Does it apply across different camp weeks?
• Does it apply when siblings are in different age groups or different camps?

Then put the answers on the booking page, so the conversation happens before payment and not in the drop-off queue.

The cleanest setup is one where siblings sit in the same family account and the discount applies at checkout. Sibling discounts and waitlists are built into Sweepa's program and camp registration, so the price a parent sees is the price they pay. The coach at sign-in only has to look after the kids.

Holiday camp multi day discount setup checklist

Work through this before bookings open, not during the first week.

1. Lock the day rate first. Discounts are a layer on top of a rate that already covers your costs.
2. Name the job. Decide whether you're after full-week conversion, keeping siblings together, or both.
3. Write the ceiling. This is the deepest discount any single child-day can get, with all rules combined.
4. Choose the stacking rule. Pick from stacked, flat dollars, or best single discount, then check where early-bird codes fit.
5. Define a full week. Decide what counts on a four-day week with a public holiday, such as the week around Australia Day or Easter. Pro-rata the full-week price, or set a separate four-day price.
6. Define a sibling. Decide whether it means the same family account, and whether it covers separate bookings, different weeks and different camps.
7. Decide what happens when plans change. If a full-week booking drops to three days, say whether the discount reverses. Line this up with your holiday camp transfer policy.
8. Run last season's mix through it. Work out the discount cost and the extra child-days it needs to earn.
9. Publish each rule in one sentence on the booking page.
10. Review after the first holiday week. Compare the full-week share and sibling share with the same week last year.

If you want to see how registration, payments and parent comms fit together in one system, the full list of Sweepa features is on one page.

If you only do one thing this week, take last summer's bookings and find the deepest discount any single child-day received. If it's above your ceiling, fix that rule first.