Displaying varying prices

Question

The holiday accommodations my company rents out have varying prices, depending on the day of arrival and the duration of the stay. Currently, these prices are charted in a scrollable table, with on the horizontal axis all dates, and on the vertical axis the duration, in number of night ranging from 3-21. Intersections that are booked don't show a price. This has the advantage of the customer being able to see what he/she would spend to depart one day later, or stay for two more days, or start their vacation a week earlier, etc. However, this also causes a pretty large grid of prices, displaying up to 7 dates * 12 durations = 84 different prices at a time. I fear this way of displaying might scare off customers, and I'd like to a/b test a new way of displaying these prices.

How could I simplify the price display, while keeping in mind the following things?

• Prices differ with every departure-date, and every duration.
• Being able to see the prices of nearby durations and departures is something that has worked very well in the past, and having no fixed arrival dates is a rare thing in the holiday business.

Thanks for your input!

Answer 1

Perhaps you could consider a design where you have a bar-chart of prices over your period. I have seen a design like that on airline sites, and I liked it a lot. Horizontally, you'd set your arrival dates, and vertically the price. You'd start with a standard-length stay, that the user might customize. I am not sure if showing a single night would make most sense, or showing a lengthier period like a week.

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Then, on hovering the bar representing a day, you could show an overlay or an area below the graph that shows prices for the different lengths of stay starting at that date, perhaps with both a total and a price-per-night for each of the stay lengths.

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That way, you avoid drowning your price page in numbers.