Weekend pricing sounds simple: charge more at the weekend. In Saudi Arabia the first question is which nights the weekend actually is. The answer is not the same for every property, and getting it wrong means a premium on a night guests do not want and none on the night they do.
Weekend days are not weekend nights
Saudi Arabia moved its official weekend from Thursday and Friday to Friday and Saturday from 29 June 2013, by royal decree, as Arab News reported at the time. A short-term rental sells nights, though, and for guests who work Sunday to Thursday the nights before a day off are Thursday night and Friday night. Saturday night is followed by a working day. So the weekend shape of a Saudi property is often Thursday and Friday nights rather than Friday and Saturday, but whether it is depends on who your guests are.
- Chalets, rest houses and farms on the edge of a city are often booked for gatherings by local guests, who follow the working week closely. For them, the nights before a day off are most of the story.
- City apartments host business travellers during the week and visitors at weekends, so their weekly shape can be flatter, and weekday demand can matter as much as the weekend.
- Destinations people travel to, such as AlUla, Taif or Abha, depend on how far guests come and how long they stay. A guest who drives in on Thursday and leaves on Saturday creates a different shape from one who flies in for a week.
Weekends also differ across the Gulf. The UAE federal government moved to a Saturday and Sunday weekend from 1 January 2022, so guests from there do not share Saudi guests' nights off.
How JokerPrice learns the weekday shape
JokerPrice does not assume a weekend. When you price against the market, it compares each night's comparable asking prices with a reference: the median across fresh nights over the coming year. Once at least six fresh dates exist, with at least two samples for a weekday, it takes the typical ratio for each weekday as the weekday pattern, kept within set limits so one odd night cannot distort it. Each night is then pulled toward that pattern according to how many comparables were seen that night. With three comparables, the night's own prices and the pattern carry equal weight; with twelve, the night's own prices carry four-fifths of it. Nights without a fresh sample follow the pattern. How strongly all of this moves your price is set by the market weight in your rules.
Two cautions follow. The pattern describes asking prices, which is what hosts hope for, not what guests booked; the article asking price is not achieved price explains the difference. And because the reference covers the whole coming year, the pattern describes a typical week, not a Ramadan week or a holiday week. Use event rules or custom date rules for those.
Check the shape against bookings
Asking prices show what hosts expect; booked nights show what guests did. JokerPrice's research reports, such as the Riyadh research report, show occupancy and booked rates by weekday from tracked public calendars once a destination has at least seven days of tracking and 100 observed listing-nights. If the tracked occupancy for your destination is clearly highest on Thursday and Friday nights, that is the strongest evidence you will get for which nights to treat as the weekend. If the report still says collecting, rely on the weekday pattern and your own booking history. The article on how we measure occupancy explains how those figures are built.
Setting your weekend rule
The weekend rule applies a premium, or a discount, on the nights you tick as weekend nights, plus a separate weekend minimum stay on those nights. New properties start with Friday and Saturday nights ticked, no premium and a two-night weekend minimum. Review that choice: for a property whose guests follow the working week, Thursday and Friday are the nights before a day off, and some properties will want all three ticked.
- With market pricing on and a mature pattern, the weekday pattern already lifts the nights where comparables ask more. Keep the weekend premium small, or at zero, so you do not count the same effect twice.
- With a fixed base, or where comparables are thin, the weekend rule does the work the pattern cannot. Set the premium from what similar listings ask on those nights, which the pricing calendar shows night by night.
- Weekend minimum stay. A two-night minimum on Thursday and Friday sells the weekend as a pair. If single weekend nights keep going unsold, shorten it or let the short-gap rule fill them, as the guide to orphan nights explains.
When holidays move the weekend
Public holidays next to a weekend create long weekends that a typical-week pattern cannot see. In 2027 National Day falls on , a Thursday, which joins Friday and Saturday into a three-day break and turns Wednesday night into a night before a day off. Founding Day falls on , a Monday, and the school break for it runs , so families with children get four days in a row, this time inside Ramadan. Price nights like these as weekend nights with a custom date rule, or with the national and school event kinds, rather than waiting for the pattern to notice.
| Event | Dates | Hijri dates | Where | Certainty | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saudi National Day | — | All of Saudi Arabia | official dates | hrsd.gov.sa | |
| Founding Day school break | — | All of Saudi Arabia | expected dates, may move | al-madina.com | |
| Founding Day | — | All of Saudi Arabia | official dates | hrsd.gov.sa |
Checklist
- Decide which nights are your weekend from your guests, not from the official weekend days.
- Check the weekend nights ticked in your rules; new properties start with Friday and Saturday.
- Read the weekday occupancy in your destination's research report once it is past the collecting stage.
- With market pricing on, keep the weekend premium small so it does not double count the weekday pattern.
- Pair the weekend nights with a weekend minimum stay, and watch for single nights that stay unsold.
- Mark long weekends created by public holidays and school breaks before the pattern has to guess.