PRICING

[Michael614]

Hi

I am new to AirBnB and find it incredibly frustrating and unpleasant to use but I have to go with the times.  I have, by the way, been advertising on HomeAway since 1998 and find that brilliant so I am not a newbie to this game. Indeed I am a proffessional and have been in high end tourism since the early 1990's.

Anyway my pricing is calculated in two ways:

either

a per night setting being the weekly amount devided by 5 and the minimum stay is 5 nights. So price for 5 nights is the same as the price for 7 nights.  But if I set the nightly price to weekly price/7 and people want to book for 7 nights then the price will appear to high. But if I set the price to the weekly price/7 and some books for 5 nights then they will not pay enough.  This has just happened to me.   Is there anyway around this system.

A fixed period for example the Film Festival in Cannes is 17th May to 28th May you can only book this period.  You can not book 14th May to 20th May where nightly price is:

14th May to 20th May 6 x €250

20th May to 28th May 7 x €1,000

is there anyway to force people to book a period in the same way that there is on HomeAway and TripAdvisor

Thank you.

From a frustrated AirBnB host.

Michael

[Alice-and-Jeff0]

Yes, manually raise the price for the dates of the fesitval to the price you want to receive nightly.  So from 17 May to 28 May make the individual nightly price $500 (or whatever the equivalent is).  That way if someone books for nights starting on 14 May, they would pay the base price of $275 for May 14, 15, 16, and $500 for May 17, 18, 19.  (Sorry have to use US dollars since that's what I see your listing in from my end) 

If you only want a single reservation for the entire time of the festival, you would need to make an individual reservation constraint for the period you want with a minimum number of days rental.  Then manually price the dates in question for the entire price divided by the individual days.  You do this in the Calendar >> Availability >>  Reservation Preferences >> below the Min/Max days you can add an indivdual rule for a period of time.  So for example, we make the minimum days to rent 3 from Thursday to Sunday and manually price to $100/night for graduation weekend.  That way we are guaranteed $300 for the weekend.  This would hold true for the 20th May to 28th May when you want to get a set price. Make an individual requirement for 8 nights minimum and then set the daily price for xx/8.  That means someone will have to take all 8 nights during that time period or not be able to book.  It overrides your 5-night minimum.  

If HomeAway was working for you, I'm unclear why you would bother with Airbnb if it's so difficult.  Clearly you were doing fine without making that switch.  

[Michael614]

Hi 

Thanks for this.  Very helpful.

I will have a look at this.  I had not seen "individual reservation constraint" mentioned anywhere.

The reason I am trying to embrace AirBnB is that I am happy to get bookings from anywhere and AirBnB is the site of the moment or maybe of the future and it is generating enquiries.  So I want to embrace it but it is an odd site.  But AirBnb seem to make it very complicated and the inability to send people my web site (which contains far more information than I could ever put on AirBnB or HomeAway) is a real pain.

Kind regards

Michael

[Alice-and-Jeff0]

"individual reservation constraint" are my words, not anything you'll be able to search for on Airbnb.  But you will find the process to do so where I indicated in the carrot chain.