I've read that Airbnb ups your rankings if you use their algorithms and Airbnb insists their "smartpricing" boosts revenue. I'm a superhost with 4 similar properties, that generally go for around $150/night, and if I have gaps I want to fill at the last minute, I lower it to as low as $100/night using the "Rule set". I turned on smartpricing, setting $100 as the minimum since that is the minimum price when I want to heavily discount last minute gaps. But Airbnb just opened my entire calendar for 6 months at the blow-out $100/night price, and began taking bookings months in advance at that price. I had to cancel them since I can't afford to take such a hit in my income, and I'm sure the cancellation of the bookings lowered my ranking, thus defeating the whole purpose.
As I've since learned from the other posts in this forum, this is normal, and so your smartpricing minimum needs to be your normal price. BUT, once you turn on smartpricing, then the rulesets do not work anymore. So that means then when you want to give away a last minute gap at a big discount you cannot, and you will have to leave the place empty with no revenue since you can no longer discount it.
Thus I don't get why anybody would ever use smartpricing since it seems impossible to earn as much as you would with smart pricing turned off. If you set the minimum to your true minimum when you need to blow out unoccupied units, Airbnb just gives away all your future bookings at that low price. And if you set the minimum to your "normal" minimum, then you can't lower it when you need to and the unit goes unoccupied.
Since turning on smartpricing seems to maybe boost your rankings, has anybody figured out how to turn it on and not have it result in a big loss in revenue?
