@Dede
Mark has mentioned this before; this algorithm seems to be including Host who are fully booked in its evaluations, which is obviously complete tosh.
Do Hosts really have to be told that if they lower their prices its doing to spur demand?
Another problem, with this not so smart pricing, is it has no exposure to our cost and in my case, it has driven me to below cost selling, in fact Airbnb have made more money on my last two booking then I did.
One Host suggested that it's up to me to get a handle on my costs and pointed out the bulk of my cost where fixed she was referring to my Mortgage (I have 65% equity and tracker mortgage with a margin of .75% over euro bar essentially, I'm only paying the capital back) so other than owning the property outright or subletting someone else property I don't know how to lower my cost further.
Airbnb are presenting Hosts with Hobson's choice, have a price that you can make money on and get no bookings or a price that will attract guest that one loses money on, while Airbnb are making money on every transaction with zero risk, I would like to know how that is equitable?
On the face of it if one compares Airbnb fees to turnover they seem low but if you compare them to your profit they extremely high unless of course you're in the top 20% of earners.
I have asked many times before that Airbnb conduct a root and branch review of their smart prices algorithm and get some heavy weight players in the data analytics business to build a model that works, one thing that they could include in the model is rental price per m2 for the location one is in which usually is a fair indication of the status of the neighbourhood and rental price below they should not go.
If google can build a map of the world down to street view level I can't understand my Airbnb not so smart pricing is so dumb.
phooooo
Regards
Cormac
The Explorer's Club Krakow III (but not much longer)