Price tips going crazy

[Fiona198]

Has anyone noticed that their price tips for Sydney going haywire? At the moment the price tips for my listing are all over the place and much higher than what they've ever been despite the fact that Airbnb's in the surrounding area are all much lower than the Price Tips are recommending. Even looking months ahead there seems to be some data analytics problems because one mid week price tip is around $174 and a few days later is  only $126. I've never seen this before and have let CS know but they didn't seem to think it was a problem although said they would mention in their notes to supervisors. I feel as if there has been some system problem.

[Rachel177]

@Fiona198 I've seen the same over the last week for Melbourne. Very high prices for dates in the middle of winter (higher than summer tips) and then they've dropped by $40 the next day. 

I tend to ignore the price tips as I don't trust the analytics at all, and most of the time the suggested prices are so low I would be losing money hosting.

[Fiona198]

@Rachel177 That's interesting that Melbourne is the same. I thought perhaps the analysts may have been accidentally using USD instead of AUD because when you convert the prices from USD to AUD it seems about the right amount. I'm ignoring the price tips for now until the problem is fixed.

[Rachel177]

@Fiona198 I think it's an ongoing issue. Over the years that price tips have been around I've seen some pretty strange pricing suggestions. It doesn't help that they don't use like for like comparisons, quite often it tells me the price is based on accomodation for 4 people, yet the max I take is 2 and the majority of my bookings are for single guests.

[Sarah977]

@Fiona198  I think most hosts totally ignore the price tips all the time. They are usually ridiculous and only are driven by Airbnb wanting hosts to have their properties booked constatntly, no matter if the host would actually be losing $ at that price.

[Fiona198]

@Sarah977 yes, at times they seem very low. I don't ever put my prices at less than what I think having a  booking is worth, but for Airbnb any incremental money is worth it for them. Sometimes if I have a gap of a couple of days that I'd like to fill I'll put the price lower than usual because I have a $70 cleaning fee that kind of makes up for it so the cleaning fee is amortised over 2 days rather than say 7.

[JJ48]

I'm in the US and my price tips have been messed up for more than a week.  One listing is 4 times as much as usual and one is half as much as usual (and it's twice as big as the the other one) and one is 'normal'.  It's frustrating because I too use them as comparative information.  If I refresh the page, every once in awhile they will go back to 'normal' but only for one of the months, not all.  Another annoying glitch.

[Fiona198]

@JJ48 Oh ok, so it might be a global issue not just Australia, therefore my USD/AUD mix up theory is unlikely. Yes, it's definitely frustrating because it's handy to know what your local competition is doing. It's winter here so price tips are handy to know to help fill the gaps that we normally don't have in summer.