Are you too getting ridiculous price tips?

[Stephanie27]

I am finding that the price tips given by Airbnb are just crazy low, they wouldn;t cover the cleaning and laundry...anyone else feel the same

[Brittany1]

@Dede0 I do not think that the amount of reviews or popularity of your listing has anything to do with it. We too have three five star apartments that are rented more than 90% of the year but we are always receiving very low price recommendations. We are in one of the post popular locations in Chicago and are priced below our competition and yet we rarely are in the green on the calendar. I wish there was a way to turn off the pricing tips so that you didn't have to see the anxiety inducing orange and danger zone level red in the calendar all the time. 

[Dede0]

Yeah, @Brittany1, I don't really get it either. Your places all look great and your base prices are low, if anything. (Your custom rates and your per-add'l-guests fees do push the rates up, but even then they seem reasonable considering the location.) Why AirBnB consistently recommends even lower seems odd. Likewise, I don't really know why they consistently recommend higher rates for my listing, when I feel like we're priced well already. ($95-110 typically, for a private-entry studio that can only accommodate two. Higher during festivals, Formula-1, and so on.) Strange...

[Mary75]

I would like to see the financial breakdown of their suggested prices as I know that it  would be the equivalent of  paying the guests to stay with me if I followed AirBnb's recommendations. 

[Keith1]

Everbooked does provide a breakdown of what went into the pricing.

if you want a 90 day free trail, feel free to send me a private message and I'll send you a link.

I suspect airbnb will start to clone the pricing competitors over time, but really airbnb's motivation for automated pricing differs from the hosts motivation so, perhaps not. 🙂

[Marsha17]

I'm new enough that I want to try the 90 day free trial of everbooked.  I'll pm you if I can figure out how.

[Michael162]

Yep. I looked at the price tips and I'm booking my place solidly with my current pricing, which is actually one of the lowest rates for a room anywhere in the city. I just upgraded the room with a bigger bed and I'm even planning on raising the rate. Airbnb's price calculator is a laughable joke, they should disable it until it is out of pre-alpha testing.

[Maria-Lurdes0]

I also have my places listed on Wimdu, and I used to get a lot of bookings from that platform.  Then a few years ago Wimdu started giving hosts the opportunity to push their rankings up by following "hints" and the hints were, of course - drop your prices.   The other hints were relax your cancelation policy, then finally accept one day bookings.   So naturally my tendency at first was to try and get to the top of the rankings, so I lowered my prices a bit until I hit that "you are in the 100% category" or something crazy like that so you actually see your listing position improve.   You know what happened after all the following of the advice?   I went from having 50% of my bookings come from Wimdu to having less then 10% of my bookings from there.  

So now I look at the "price tips" and think - it's exactly the same.   Hosts are being encouraged to lower prices in order to capture a completely different market (taking away the hotel/motel dedicated traveler), we are being encouraged to contradict our own set cancelation policies (having support call us to ask "are you sure you don't want to refund X"?) and we're being encouraged to Instant Book.  The business is changing and while I'm not nuts about the direction, I think I'll be a salmon swimming upstream if I don't get on board.   I do use Instant Book, I do sometimes use price tips (and agree the prices are crazy low), I have played with smart pricing and found it also not a good tool for me.

[Pat7]

Yes they are completely rediculous and also an insult to the host.  I do my mown pricing.

[Phill0]

Stephanie, I agree with you.  I don't pay attention to the price tips at all.  I do home share with private rooms and private baths in a house in a very desirable neighborhood in Los Angeles.  My house has a pool and a jacuzzi.  I offer breakfast and 24 hour fruits, snacks and non-alcoholic beverages.  AirBNB price tips are $70.00. It is crazy.  And when I compare my listing to other listings, no one is charging that low.

[Orsolya0]

Do you think that pricing in accordance with the tips offered by AirBnB helps your position in the listings? I see a completely new pattern in our bookings lately. First of all the prices offered are ridiculous around half of what we usually charged last year and Budapest is already a dirt cheap destination. Secondly we do not get bookings in advance. It is nearly the middle of May and we do not have any booking for the summer and last year we had an around 95% occupancy rate and travel industry is booming around here with new records of tourists every month. Instead of booking ahead, I get bookings for next week or even just a few days ahead.....

[Keith1]

I don't believe that turning on automated pricing affects your search ranking directly.

Guests are getting more sophistocated about search.  they will set a minimum and maximum price.

One risk of lowering your price is that you may lower it to a point where it's below your ideal guests comfort zone.

the min pricing allows people to select out places they think are likely to be "too cheap" and not offer the quality they want.   so you may have a perfect offering and they'll never see it.

it may also move your listing INTO someones pricerange.  This could either be really good (someone great gets a really good place for a price they otherwise couldn't afford, and they have a great experience and they're forever grateful), or really bad (some cheapskate who is trying to maximize the value of every penny and thinks this entitles them to things that aren't on offer).

[Sandy33]

I agree and I just ignore Airbnb's nudges.

[Julia-And-Hugo0]

I origionally thought it a great idea until a young lady booked for a month - half of the time being the school holiday period.

So you can imagine, I was shocked to see what the gross was that I would be earning.

• I have a basic price  [which I reduced to the smart pricing]   and then I have a price for school holidays . So in other words I have overridden the smart pricing for the school holiday periods to keep it to what I WANT..................... or so I thought!!..
  
  I think there is a FLAW with the SMART PRICING , it has overridden all my pricing and taken it from the basics and charged that amount for the entire month of 28 days..
  Naturally I am not happy about this as I have lost a lot. 
• She made an instant booking  and the total on the Airbnb confirmation amount to me getting $290 per night gross for each night, including the school holidays.???????   This is for a 5 bedroom house in a selubrious suburb.
  
  What can be done about this? I had a great conversation with one of the specialists Dave, who has re-routed all my information to Airbnb a week ago..................... and I have heard nothing!
• I have now deleted the smart pricing.  Should I cancell the whole booking, or tell her she can only have the first 2 weeks and NOT the school holidays - last 2 weeks?
  Please help.
  Julia

[Ana7]

At first I thougth BNB was serious with this, but when I saw their price tip is 9$ for the studioapartment that I'm literally scrubbing on my knees for every guest, fill the fridge with welcome drinks and always have some basic ingredients in, I really felt they are making fun of me 😞

So I ignore them and put a realistic price. Even now I think it's too low, but I'm rather full than not.

[Keith1]

you really shouldn't cancel... the guest didn't do anything wrong.

you might want to try to complain to airbnb about overriding your manually set pricing for those dates and see if they'll make it up to you (I doubt it but it's free to ask).