Manual Dynamic Pricing?

[Reiley1]

From what I have read, the pricing tools on air bnb aren’t great so as a new host, I am trying to manually set prices. I would love to hear your advice on how you dynamically price weeks/weekends and also peak seasons & busy weekends vs slow seasons.

Airbnb suggested me a 35% weekend increase which seems so high. So I just raised my base price and then lowered the weekend % rate. What have you guys found to be effective? And then for seasonal things, I haven’t set it yet. For example, Christmas is coming up and I just had someone book the entire holiday week and got double discount (10% for weekly & the 15% high rated guest) on my base price. I want to learn how to set peak season pricing (I’m fine with the heavy discount for this Christmas since I’m so new).

Thanks! 

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Reiley1 firstly I would drop the high rated guest not least because it is a very low bar for guests.

Next we used to not have a great difference between low and high season predominantly because in a 1750s house the heating costs in low season were astronomical.

In fact if we get back into hosting we will probably close in January/February and travel to warmer climes ourselves. We were lucky to have no financing costs so our costs were variable and dominated by heating!

Our biggest problem was we tended to get late bookings so we couldn't start with a higher price and drop it as Christmas approached. 

Best advice I can give is go look at comparable places near you and see what they have done.

[Reiley1]

Thanks Mike & Jane for sharing your experience!

[Greystone0]

Hi @Reiley1  - welcome! And agree with the advice given! Here's some thoughts:

- just to say this out loud, but there really is no 'wrong' here, really. Learn as you go! We are always tweaking our prices and keep an open mind about how guests perceive pricing and our market, etc.

- just know that discounts can stack as you found out. We'd also recommend 'not' using the highly rated guest discount, it's poorly named too. 

- if you aren't already, keep a calendar filled with all the local dates & all the holidays that could impact your pricing. We are open 12 months in advance (not here, but elsewhere) and so we scour local resources to understand dates for things as we get events/conferences etc all year long. So you can consider a rate increase for those date or refrain from offering price reductions or promotions for those dates.  

- if you haven't already, have you researched what your competition is doing? This helps guide us on what guests are experiencing. When you do a search like a guest, what else is AIRBNB suggesting? That is really helpful data to help with pricing.

- and occasionally we 'set' the 'smart pricing' just to see what the suggestions are. We turn it on, take a look, then turn it off. We have yet to discover that this is catching all the local things going on around here.

Hope that's some food for thought. 

Good luck!