I had though of that, Euc-. It was because of OTA factors, but back when I was a Revenue Manager we occasionally used very high minimum stays (over 9 nights) instead of using a "sold out" status. This was done because the hotel was penalized if we set a night to "sold out" and then later didn't actually completely sell out.

We only had to do that on dates when there were a lot of speculative reservations. For example, whenever the local NFL team got in the running for playoff games. Fans would book stays in anticipation of home games. If the team didn't make the playoffs, they would cancel the reservations.

Anyway, when I saw this was right at New Year's, my first thought was that it was a similar concept. But, because the same astronomical rate is for all available days in January, I figured it was just lack of rates being loaded.