How to price holiday and peak-season appointments as a solo beauty pro
The week before prom, your booking system is filling faster than it ever does in February. You have a waitlist. Clients are texting asking if you have anything. You turn people away. And at the end of that week, your revenue looks exactly the same as any other fully-booked week, because your prices are the same whether your chair is the most sought-after it ever is or the least.
This is the peak-season pricing problem. Your supply — the hours in your week — is fixed. During certain predictable windows, demand for that supply increases substantially. When demand exceeds supply and your price doesn't respond, you are undercharging at your busiest period while carrying the full operational stress of a packed schedule. You're also providing a benefit to the clients who happen to book early during peak that you're not providing equally to all clients: they get your peak-season slot at your off-season price.
This post covers demand-based pricing for solo beauty pros during defined high-demand windows: how to decide whether a peak-season premium makes sense for your business, how to calculate the amount, how to announce it without creating client drama, how to handle the loyalty client question, and what booking and deposit mechanics look different during peak. This is distinct from the post on raising your prices permanently (which covers the mechanics of a full price increase that applies year-round), the post on pricing add-on services (which covers how to add ancillary charges on top of a base service), and the seasonal slowdown post (which covers the slow-season problem of filling a book that isn't full). This post is specifically about the high-demand window: when you have more demand than supply, and what you do with that.
What peak season actually means for solo beauty pros
Peak season is not a single thing. It varies meaningfully by vertical, by market, and by the individual practitioner's client mix. A bridal colorist in a suburban wedding-market area has a very different peak calendar than a nail tech who does mostly holiday press-ons in an urban market. Before you build a peak-season pricing policy, you need to identify your actual peak windows — not the general industry narrative about "wedding season."
There are three types of peaks:
Hard seasonal peaks: windows that happen every year, at roughly the same time, driven by cultural events with fixed calendar dates. Prom season (April–May in most US markets), wedding season (May–September in most US markets), the November–December holiday window, Valentine's Day week, and New Year's Eve are all hard peaks. These are predictable twelve months in advance. You can build your pricing policy around them before they arrive.
Soft seasonal peaks: windows that are semi-predictable but not uniformly timed. Graduation season varies by school calendar. Homecoming varies by market. The spring-into-summer style refresh is real but diffuse — it builds from late March through May rather than arriving on a specific date. These peaks are worth pricing for, but they require slightly more local market awareness than a calendar date.
Opportunistic peaks: spikes driven by events outside your control — a local festival, a venue opening, a social media trend that suddenly sends your booking form traffic. These are unpredictable and can't be built into advance pricing, but they're worth recognizing when they happen (and capturing via your deposit and lead-time mechanics, which can respond to demand signals faster than a price change can).
The practical exercise before building a peak-season pricing policy: pull your last twelve months of appointment data and mark which weeks had a waitlist, which weeks filled in three days or fewer, and which weeks you turned clients away. Those are your empirical peaks — not what the industry says peak is, but what your specific book shows. If you don't have that data yet, the hard-peak windows above are a reasonable starting point.
The case for a peak-season premium
When clients are competing for your slots, the market-clearing price for your time is higher than your standard rate. This is not a controversial economic claim — it's the same mechanism that makes hotel rooms cost more during a conference week and flight prices spike over Thanksgiving. Your labor is a fixed supply in a demand-variable market. When demand goes up, the price should go up to reflect the relative scarcity of your time.
The case against a peak-season premium usually comes down to three concerns: that clients will resent it, that loyal clients shouldn't pay more, and that the premium will hurt long-term relationships. All three are worth addressing directly, because they're real but not decisive.
Will clients resent it? Clients who understand that prices are higher during predictably busy periods — and who are told this in advance — generally do not resent it. They price-shop hotels before a holiday weekend and accept the difference. They pay more for an Uber on New Year's Eve. The context matters: a surprise price increase at the appointment is a different experience than a 45-day advance notice that prices for December 15–31 are $30 higher this year. The resentment risk is in the surprise, not the premium.
Should loyal clients pay more? This is the substantive loyalty question, and the answer is nuanced. Loyal clients benefit from peak-season pricing in a way that casual clients don't: they get priority access. The benefit you give your loyal clients during peak is not a lower price — it's a guaranteed slot before the waitlist forms. That is a more valuable benefit than a $20 discount on one appointment. More on this below.
Will it hurt long-term relationships? The relationships most likely to be hurt by peak-season pricing are ones where the client has come to expect that your pricing never reflects market conditions. A client who has never paid a peak-season premium anywhere expects that the rule doesn't apply to you. That expectation is a product of how you've communicated (or not communicated) your pricing policy. A clear, well-announced peak-season policy resets that expectation once. Handled with care, it doesn't damage relationships — it recalibrates them to a model that is sustainable year over year.
The positive case, simply: a solo beauty pro who does not charge a peak-season premium is working her hardest, her most stressed week, at her lowest revenue per hour of effort. That is the arrangement most worth fixing in a solo business.
Temporary peak-season premium vs. permanent price increase
These are fundamentally different actions, and conflating them is one of the most common peak-season pricing errors.
A permanent price increase applies year-round to all clients for all services going forward. You raise your prices because your costs have increased, your skills have grown, your market rate has shifted, or you're at capacity and want to thin demand. This applies at all times, at your normal booking cadence, to all clients equally. The decision criteria for a permanent increase are different from the decision criteria for a peak-season premium.
A peak-season premium is a temporary surcharge that applies during a defined window and reverts when the window closes. It is not a price increase in the permanent sense — it is a reflection that your time is worth more during this specific period than it is at other times. At the end of the peak window, your prices return to their normal level. Clients who book outside the peak window pay the standard rate.
The distinction matters for how you communicate it: "My prices are going up" requires a permanent-increase conversation. "I charge a peak-season premium for appointments during the holiday window" is a different conversation with a different expectation — the client knows it's time-bounded and can plan around it (by booking in advance for the peak window, or by scheduling her appointment outside the window if the standard rate is what she wants).
A peak-season premium does not preclude a permanent price increase. They are independent decisions. If your prices need to go up year-round, do that separately, at a different time, with the permanent-increase communication. Bundling the two — raising prices generally and calling it a "holiday surcharge" — creates confusion about what will revert and what won't.
How to set the premium amount
The premium amount is not a guess. It should be grounded in three data points: what clients are currently paying, what the demand signal tells you about willingness to pay, and what your per-slot economics look like during peak.
Step 1: identify the demand signal. Is your book filling in three days during peak, compared to two weeks at off-peak? Do you have a waitlist? Are clients texting to ask about availability for dates that are already full? Each of these is a signal that your current price is below the market-clearing level during that window. The stronger the signal, the higher the premium the market can bear.
Step 2: set the premium as a flat amount, not a percentage. Flat amounts are simpler to communicate and easier to apply consistently. "Holiday appointments are $25 more" is a clean statement. "Holiday appointments are 14% more" is not. Pick a round number that reflects the demand signal: $20–$30 for a moderate peak signal, $30–$50 for a strong one (fully booked a week or more in advance with a waitlist), $50+ only if your book fills multiple weeks in advance during peak and you're turning away multiple clients per peak week.
Step 3: calculate the minimum price floor. During peak, the floor is: your standard price + the peak premium. This floor applies to everything during the peak window — regular clients, last-minute fills, family clients, loyalty clients. Nothing is priced below it during the peak window. Not a slot that is still open two days before. Not a fill from your waitlist. Not a client who was referred by a loyal client. The floor exists because every slot that is discounted below the floor during peak is a slot you're selling below the market rate when demand is at its highest. If you discount during peak, you're recreating the off-season economics at the exact moment when the market would pay more.
Step 4: verify the premium doesn't exceed the market tolerance for your specific client base. A $25 premium on a $180 color appointment (14%) is much easier to absorb than a $25 premium on a $45 nail appointment (55%). The premium should feel proportionate. If your services are lower-ticket, the premium should be smaller in absolute terms — even $10–$15 is meaningful demand-based pricing on a $50 service. What you're avoiding is a premium that creates genuine sticker shock at a service level where clients are price-sensitive.
When and how to announce a peak-season price change
The announcement window is not a suggestion — it is the mechanism that separates a premium that clients accept from one that creates resentment. The rule: announce at least 30 days before the peak window opens. 45 days is better. 60 days gives your existing clients enough time to book before the premium takes effect, which is both a client benefit and a loyalty reward.
What the announcement should say: three things, in this order. First, when the premium applies (specific dates, not "during the holidays"). Second, how much it is (flat dollar amount, not a percentage, not a vague "a little more"). Third, what clients can do now if they prefer the standard rate (book before the window opens). Nothing else is needed. No justification essay. No apology. No comparison to what other salons charge. The three-item announcement is complete.
Where to announce it: in your booking system's description or pricing page (so it's visible to any client who books during the window), in a message to your existing client list (text or however you communicate with regulars), and in your IG stories or bio if you use Instagram for bookings. The booking system placement is mandatory — it ensures that every client who books sees the peak-season price before they confirm. The client-list message is what gives loyal clients advance notice to act. The social post is optional but useful if you consistently attract new clients through social.
When clients ask why: "I charge a seasonal premium during my busiest windows — it's similar to how hotel rates go up during a busy weekend. If you'd like to book at my regular rate, I have availability before [date] or after [date]." This framing is factual, non-apologetic, and gives the client an action to take if she wants to avoid the premium. It does not invite a negotiation, and it does not explain the economics of your business to a client who may not want that explanation.
What to not say: "I'm so sorry, but I have to charge a little more because things get really busy and my costs go up." This framing is apologetic (which invites pushback), vague about the amount ("a little more" is an invitation to negotiate), and ties the premium to cost rather than demand (which implies it should revert when your costs go down, not when peak ends). The premium is not because your costs went up. It's because your time is scarcer. Say that or say nothing about the reason.
The loyalty client question: access or discount?
The most common objection to peak-season pricing from solo beauty pros is: "But what about my regulars? I can't charge them more — they've been coming for years." This is a real concern, but it conflates two different types of loyalty reward: a price concession and a booking priority. These are not the same thing, and one of them is much better than the other.
The discount approach: charge loyal clients your off-peak rate during the peak window, as a loyalty benefit. This is well-intentioned but creates several problems. You now have two prices for the same service in the same window, which is administratively messy and creates situations where a loyal client mentions her rate to a newer client who paid the peak price. It also means that your most consistent clients are paying below your floor rate during your highest- demand period — exactly the clients you'd least need to give a concession to, since they book regardless of price fluctuation. And it creates a precedent: if loyalty earns a price exemption from the peak surcharge this year, it needs to earn one every year, which means your loyal clients' expectation of "what they get" now includes rate protection in perpetuity.
The access approach: charge loyal clients the peak rate, but give them priority booking access — a window to book peak slots before the peak price is announced publicly, or before the waitlist forms. This is a better loyalty benefit for two reasons. First, it is more valuable: a guaranteed slot during a period of high demand is harder to get than a $25 discount. A loyal client who secures her Christmas Eve appointment in October when other clients couldn't get one in December has received something genuinely rare. Second, it doesn't create price hierarchy complications — all clients pay the same peak rate, but loyal clients get the first offer.
The practical implementation: 60 days before your peak window, send your regular clients a message saying: "I'm opening my holiday calendar to regulars before it goes public. Prices will be $[X] more per appointment during [dates] — if you'd like to grab your slot now, here's the booking link." They pay the peak rate, but they have access no one else has yet. The booking itself rewards their loyalty more than a discount would.
The exception: a loyal client who has genuinely been a consistent revenue anchor for your business — someone who books every four to six weeks, refers new clients, and has been with you for multiple years — may warrant a one-time rate accommodation during peak if she raises the concern. That is a relationship decision, not a pricing policy decision. Handle it individually and privately. But do not build a systemic loyalty discount into your peak-season policy, because "loyal client" will mean different things to different clients who all think they qualify.
Booking and deposit mechanics during peak
Peak season is the period when your deposit policy matters most. The clients booking prom or holiday appointments are often booking weeks in advance, during a window when cancellation probability is higher than usual (plans change, events get rescheduled, the client finds an opening at a salon that was previously booked). A peak-season booking without a deposit is a future obligation with no financial commitment — and it is almost certainly taking a slot away from a client who would have kept the appointment.
Two specific adjustments that are worth making during peak that may not be your standard off-peak policy:
Increase the deposit amount during peak. If your standard deposit is $30, consider raising it to $50–$75 for peak-window appointments. The deposit's function is to create a financial commitment that makes cancellation costly. During peak, the opportunity cost of a cancellation is higher — a cancellation in December means a slot that will not refill as easily as one in February, because you may already be at the point where new clients can't get in. A higher deposit reflects the higher stakes on both sides.
Tighten the cancellation and rescheduling window. If your standard policy allows rescheduling with 48-hour notice, consider requiring 72 hours or more for peak appointments. The reasoning is the same as the deposit: the cost of a last-minute vacancy during peak is higher than off-peak, and the policy should reflect that. State this clearly in your booking confirmation so the client knows before she commits — not as a surprise if she needs to cancel.
Close same-day bookings during peak. If you normally accept same-day bookings, peak season is the period to close that window or make it extremely conditional. During peak, you are almost certainly booked days in advance — a same-day policy that allows last-minute slots isn't filling gaps because there are no gaps to fill. What it may do instead is create confusion: clients who can't get an appointment two weeks out assume same-day is the only option and call or text asking about it. Removing the same-day window during peak reduces that friction. If you do have an occasional vacancy during peak, it should go to your waitlist first — not to a public same-day booking channel.
Note in your booking confirmation that peak pricing applies. Your confirmation message should state: "This appointment is booked at the peak-season rate of $[X]." Not as a warning — as a confirmation. The client should never open the email or text confirmation and be surprised by the price. The confirmation is the final checkpoint where she sees what she agreed to.
What to do with same-day availability during peak
During your highest-demand windows, true vacancies are rare. But they do happen: a client cancels, a service runs shorter than expected, or you added capacity for peak and it didn't fill. What you do with a peak-window vacancy is different from what you do with a February vacancy.
Contact your waitlist first, at the peak rate. A waitlisted client who couldn't get a holiday appointment and receives a text saying "I had a cancellation for December 22nd — would you like it?" is not going to decline because it's $25 more than your standard rate. She has been waiting for a slot that didn't exist. The slot is scarce. She will take it at the peak rate without negotiating, because the alternative is not getting her appointment before the holiday. Do not offer the vacancy at a discount to fill it quickly. Fill it through your waitlist at the peak price.
If the waitlist doesn't fill it, open it to public booking at the peak rate — not as a same-day discount. The vacancy is valuable even during peak because peak-window appointments have value. A client who finds a December 22nd opening and takes it is not getting a discount — she's getting lucky. Do not reward luck with a price reduction. The slot should be listed at the same peak rate as everything else. If it doesn't fill and the day passes, that is the cost of a cancellation that happened despite your policy — not a signal that the price was wrong.
Track peak vacancies separately from off-peak vacancies. If you're getting multiple cancellations during peak even with higher deposits and a tighter cancellation window, that's a signal worth investigating. Are peak clients more likely to be first-time clients with less appointment loyalty than your regulars? Are event-driven appointments (prom, weddings) more subject to plan changes than self-care appointments? The pattern tells you whether to adjust your deposit policy, your cancellation window, or your client mix during peak — not whether to adjust your prices.
Vertical-specific peak seasons and patterns
Colorists. The highest-demand windows are typically wedding season (May–September), prom (April–May), and the holiday window (late November through New Year's Eve). For colorists who do bridal work, wedding season is the most complex peak because bridal bookings often include multiple services (consultation, trial, day-of) booked months in advance with multiple members of the bridal party. The pricing structure for bridal work should account for the total session time and the advance booking commitment required — a bridal color appointment that books six months in advance is holding a calendar position that affects the surrounding week.
The specific pattern colorists face during peak: clients who want a service type the colorist hasn't done on them before (new dimension technique, first-time balayage) during the highest-demand window. Peak season is not the time to take on complex new-client color services. The scope-mismatch risk on a new client is higher, the time uncertainty is higher, and a service that runs long during peak pushes subsequent bookings and creates compounding stress. The right policy: new-client bookings during peak require a paid consultation in advance, and first-time color services have longer lead-time requirements during the peak window than during the rest of the year.
Lash artists. Peak demand windows are typically Valentine's Day week, prom season, wedding season, and the December holiday window. Lash fill timing creates a specific peak-season complication: a client who comes in for a set in early December will need a fill in two to three weeks — right in the middle of the holiday rush. Building that fill into your booking confirmation for December sets and routing the fill into your waitlist list in advance is how you avoid a fill-request surge on December 20th that you can't absorb.
Holiday lash bookings also attract first-time lash clients who want lashes for a specific event and have never had lash extensions before. The intake and sensitivity considerations for new clients are the same year-round, but during peak they interact with time pressure in a way they don't off-peak: a first-time client who develops a sensitivity response during peak is a recovery conversation you're managing while your calendar is already at full capacity. The specific adjustment: new full-set clients during peak require a patch test at least 48 hours before the appointment, with that 48-hour window built into the booking lead time. This requirement should be in the booking confirmation, not delivered verbally the day of.
Nail technicians. Holiday peak is the most acute demand window for nail techs: the week before Thanksgiving and the two weeks before Christmas are the highest-demand windows in the year for most nail techs in any market. Valentine's Day and prom are secondary peaks. The holiday window is also the window most likely to include same-day and last-minute requests from clients who have not been regulars — they want holiday nails and are booking wherever has availability.
The nail tech peak-season dynamic worth managing: press-on nail sets, nail art with higher time complexity, and client requests for services they've seen on social media that are different from what you offer during the rest of the year. Peak season is not the time to introduce a new service you haven't practiced at volume. If you offer complex holiday nail art, price for the time it actually takes — not for the time a standard gel manicure takes. A hand-painted holiday design that takes forty minutes longer than your standard service should carry a service charge that reflects those forty minutes, stated in your service menu before the client books, not calculated at checkout.
PMU artists. The peak windows for permanent makeup are typically pre-summer (March–May) and pre-holiday (September–November). The pattern is predictable: clients want brows, lip blush, or liner done before an event-heavy period, and they book during the preceding months when there's time to heal. What they often don't account for is that the PMU artist's calendar fills months in advance, and the healing timeline for PMU means there's a hard cutoff for "get this done before summer" — if the appointment is in June and the client needs six weeks of healing, the summer timeline doesn't work.
The specific communication for PMU artists during peak: include the healing timeline in your booking confirmation along with the expected visible result timeline. "Your appointment is [date]. Full healing takes 4–6 weeks. Your touchup, if needed, will be scheduled 6–8 weeks post-procedure." This sets the right expectation and prevents the client who expects "done before the Fourth of July" from being surprised in late June that she still has some visible healing underway.
Mobile groomers. Peak demand windows for mobile groomers include the summer months (when clients' pets need more frequent grooming and boarding events create grooming demand), the holiday window (clients want pets groomed before holiday gatherings and family photos), and spring shedding season. Mobile groomers face an additional constraint that salon-based practitioners don't: route optimization. A fully-booked peak week for a mobile groomer is not just a full calendar — it's a calendar that has to make geographic sense, because route inefficiency during peak erodes the economic benefit of the additional bookings.
The mobile groomer peak-season pricing adjustment worth making: price by geographic zone during peak if you're not doing so already. An appointment that fits your existing route costs nothing additional in drive time. An appointment that requires a detour off your route during an already-full day has a real time cost. During peak, when you have enough demand to fill your schedule efficiently, off-route bookings should carry a travel surcharge — not because the grooming service costs more, but because the route disruption has a quantifiable cost in drive time that could otherwise be another appointment on the route.
Six mistakes during peak season
No price increase at all. Working your busiest, most exhausting weeks at the same rate as your slowest weeks means the market is rewarding you for scarcity with additional stress, not additional revenue. The solo beauty pro who is fully booked at peak with a waitlist and who charges the same rate as February is providing a below-market service to her peak-window clients. The premium is not gouging — it is accurate pricing.
Announcing the premium with less than two weeks' notice. A peak-season premium announced the week before the peak window opens is a surprise for every client who already booked (even if you plan to grandfather their rate) and a problem for every client who was planning to book. The announcement timeline is part of the policy. Announce it 30–60 days out and the premium becomes expected context. Announce it ten days out and it becomes an argument.
Per-appointment exception-making for individual clients. Once you give the off-peak rate to one loyal client during peak, you've established that the rate is negotiable with sufficient relationship pressure. Other clients who find out — and they often do — now have a data point that asking for an exception is a viable strategy. The access-based loyalty reward (priority booking at the peak rate) avoids this entirely. If you do make individual exceptions, do not disclose them and do not create a category of "clients who qualify" that exists only in your memory and has no written policy basis.
Not tightening the deposit or cancellation policy during peak. The operational risk of a peak-season appointment is higher than an off-peak appointment because the slot is harder to fill if the client cancels. Your deposit and cancellation window should reflect that. Keeping your standard off-peak deposit and cancellation terms for December bookings means a cancellation in December has the same financial protection as a cancellation in January — when the actual replacement difficulty is completely different. Increase the deposit and extend the cancellation window for peak appointments.
Accepting more bookings than your peak schedule can actually hold. The temptation during peak is to take every booking request because demand is there. But a peak calendar that runs twenty percent over your sustainable weekly capacity doesn't produce twenty percent more revenue — it produces the same revenue with compounding fatigue, more quality-control risk, and a higher probability of a service problem that costs you more to resolve than the additional appointment generated. Set a peak-season cap at your maximum sustainable capacity, not at whatever demand allows. Your waitlist captures overflow demand; you don't need to absorb it all yourself.
Not re-booking peak clients before they leave the chair. Peak-season clients who don't rebook at the end of the appointment are your highest churn risk. They came in for an event (prom, holiday gathering, Valentine's Day). The event is over. The urgency that drove them to you is gone. Without a rebook conversation at the end of the appointment, they'll return when they next feel the urgency — which may be your next peak window, or may be a different practitioner. The prompt is simple: "Want me to put you down for your next appointment? I usually fill up a few weeks out." This is not pressure — it is a service, and it is also the mechanism that converts a peak-season client into a regular-booking client before the urgency that brought her there dissipates.
The three-year compound
Two colorists. Same skills, same market, same service menu. Both have a hard peak during the holiday window (late November through December) and a soft peak during wedding season (May–August). Both are fully booked during peak, with a waitlist, for approximately eight weeks per year across their two peak windows.
Colorist A does not charge a peak-season premium. She is fully booked at $190 per appointment during peak and off-peak alike. She takes the same number of appointments regardless of the window. During peak, she has a waitlist she never uses to fill cancellation slots (she just reopens the slot to new bookings at the standard rate, sometimes with a small discount to fill it quickly). Her peak-window no-show rate is slightly higher than her off-peak rate because her deposit is the same ($35) and her cancellation window is the same (48 hours) regardless of the season.
Colorist B charges a $35 peak-season premium, announced 45 days before each peak window. She gives her regulars a 60-day priority booking window before the announcement goes public. Her deposit during peak is $65 (vs. $35 off-peak). Her cancellation window during peak is 72 hours (vs. 48 hours off-peak). She re-books every peak client before they leave for a post-peak appointment.
Let's run the numbers on the holiday peak window — eight weeks with an average of five appointments per day, four days per week:
Colorist A — holiday peak window: 160 appointments at $190 = $30,400. Three cancellations per week with 48-hour notice = 24 cancellations over eight weeks. Deposit retained on cancellations: 24 × $35 = $840. Net holiday-peak revenue: approximately $30,400.
Colorist B — holiday peak window: 158 appointments at $225 (two clients rescheduled to off-peak after seeing the premium) = $35,550. Three cancellations per week with 72-hour notice at higher deposit: 24 × $65 = $1,560 in retained deposits. The tighter cancellation window and higher deposit also reduce late cancellations by approximately one per week = 8 fewer cancellations vs. Colorist A, so 16 actual cancellations instead of 24. Net holiday-peak revenue: approximately $35,550 + $1,040 in retained deposits = $36,590.
Holiday-peak revenue gap, year one: approximately $6,190 from the same eight weeks, the same service, the same market — from a $35 premium, a higher deposit, and a tighter cancellation window.
Across both peak windows (holiday + wedding season, totaling approximately sixteen peak weeks per year), the annual gap grows further. Over three years, assuming modest booking growth and the same peak premium structure, the compounding difference in peak-season economics between the two practitioners is in the range of $35,000–$45,000 in total revenue — from the same skills, the same clients, and the same demand, differentiated only by whether a peak-season pricing policy was in place.
The investment required: one advance announcement message, two booking system configuration changes (deposit amount and cancellation window for peak dates), and the rebook conversation at the end of every peak-window appointment. The setup takes about an hour, once per peak window, before the window opens.
The annual calendar exercise
Every year, during a slow week, pull out a calendar and mark the following:
Your last year's peak windows, based on actual booking data (which weeks filled fastest, which weeks had a waitlist, which weeks you turned clients away). Your upcoming year's hard-peak dates: local prom dates if you have data, wedding season start and end, Thanksgiving week, Christmas through New Year's, Valentine's Day. Any local events that created opportunistic peaks last year.
For each peak window: set the premium amount. Set the deposit amount. Set the cancellation window. Set the advance announcement date (45–60 days before the window opens). Set the loyalty-client priority booking date (60 days before, or 15 days before the public announcement).
Write this into a simple document. It does not need to be elaborate — a note in your phone or a one-page doc in your booking system is sufficient. The document means that next October, when the holiday rush is three weeks away and you're already fielding booking requests, you have decisions already made. You are not figuring out your peak-season policy in the middle of your peak season. You made those decisions in February, during a quiet week, when you could think about them clearly.
Peak-season pricing is not a policy that runs itself — it runs once a year per window, for the cost of an announcement message and two configuration changes in your booking system. The alternative is working your hardest weeks at your average rate, indefinitely. That is the more expensive choice.