How often do you raise your rates?

[Laura2592]

Just curious.

As I have mentioned in a few threads, we started out too low and so we raised our rates pretty aggressively this year. As we are still booking without people batting an eye on value I am thinking of raising them again in 2020. We keep our cleaning fee low and just spread the cost over the nightly fee as we have heard guests complain about paying a cleaning fee at all, but with all this COVID stuff it looks like that might be something to adjust as well. 

Do you raise your rates based on demand for your space or some other factor? Do you do this annually or more often? How about your cleaning fee?

[Emiel1]

@Laura2592 

IMHO the question must be more general: how often do you change your rates, as they can also decrease.... I am on "Smart Pricing" with a small bandwith, and it does a rather good job.

The bottom price is offcourse the minimum I want. If there is higher demand which is not catched by "Smart Pricing", i set fixed prices for that expected time period. So actually it is a rather continuous process through the year, i would say on average almost every month I change something on the rates.

But mostly by using rulesets and not by manually changing the prices into the calender or in the pricing section.

best regards,

Emiel

[Laura2592]

@Emiel1 point taken. To be more clear,  I will ask, how often do you change your lowest price if you are on smart pricing? We are on it as well and as we are in an area in which there aren't a lot of other Airbnbs we don't have good market data or even major increases. Smart pricing tells me all the time that my rates are too high, thus they seldom go up. But we are constantly booked so I tend to ignore that. 

[Lisa723]

I leave it to Wheelhouse, which has worked out very well (doubled revenue in first year).

[Laura2592]

@Lisa723 we had a similar pricing tool but there is limited data in our area. It advised us that $99 was as much as we should charge and we are booking solid at $120. I think the usefulness of such tools depends on how much benchmarking it can do in your market. Our market is very small and rural. 

[Lisa723]

@Laura2592 agree, so is ours, and that was originally why we went with Wheelhouse. Other tools don't work or aren't even offered in our area. Wheelhouse offered a 30-day free trial and after trying it we were sold.

[Dale-and-Dustie0]

Hi Lisa,

Can you share what "Wheelhouse" Is? 

[Lisa723]

@Dale-and-Dustie0 

I'm not sure I can post the link here, but you can search for "wheelhouse str pricing".

https://www.usewheelhouse.com/

@Ann72 @Laura2592 Wheelhouse has pushed our prices way up for 2021 and we are already booking for next summer, with July and August almost full at our lake house. Demand is huge for a private getaway within driving distance of Seattle/Portland. We got a cancellation for Thanksgiving week, and within three hours it rebooked at 4x the original rate.

Before this, the primary way Wheelhouse increased our revenue was increasing occupancy. My manual pricing was much less variable, and we had significant gaps for low-demand dates. Wheelhouse varies the rates widely, so we get more for high-demand dates, and fill low-demand dates that would previously have gone unbooked. I think trying to do this manually would be extremely time-consuming, if not unmanageable.

When we get discount requests, we just say that the price is set automatically according to regional supply and demand, and we don't offer further discounts.

[Laura2592]

@Lisa723 I will check it out. We don't really have a problem booking weekends, but we still have a few weekdays (and an incomplete weekend) left on the calendar this year. The peak demand pricing tool we used wasn't really the best. I had someone stay who was a marketing consultant and say that we should be charging twice our nightly rate (and wanted some free nights for his recommendations. He had a whole analysis he wanted to sell me. I made my dubious face.)

We had put our place on VRBO but are so booked here we have not yet launched it there. I have noticed that prices are MUCH higher per night for a property like ours on that site. 

[Dale-and-Dustie0]

Thank you Lisa! 

[Ann72]

@Laura2592  After the first season of modest rates to attract bookings, I raised rates a LOT.  Bookings increased and I raised them again the next year.  I think I let them hold steady for awhile, then did a lot of analysis and turned on Smart Pricing with my minimum as high as possible.  (I'd love to try Wheelhouse as @Lisa723 has been a fan for a long time but it doesn't cover Maine yet.)  Anyway, SP was great for awhile but they tweaked the algo about a year ago and since then it doesn't swing prices up as much.  I still use it, though.  It raises prices far in advance and my bookings have a long lead time on average.

In August, with no availability left in the high season, I raised rates a lot for 2021.  Then immediately got off-season bookings (long weekends in November, not just Thanksgiving, in Maine?  Never happens).  I do feel I may be pushing the envelope with the recent rate hikes, but I'll let them sit there for awhile and see how it goes.  I'm not worried about prices scaring off bookings, but want to be sure I'm still offering value for money and not raising expectations unrealistically.  At the same time - guest behavior has been so different this year on so many levels it's hard to be absolutely sure of a direction for next year.

[Fred13]

I have raised my prices $100 per night every year for the last 5 years. In turn, I improve my place markedly each year. For the first time in 6 years I am not fully booked, but wouldn't lower my price,  I rather rent less anyway; back to back bookings year round was getting exhausting. 

[Bryan10]

My rates are now about 60% of what they were 5 years ago. If smart pricing had it's way, I'd be charging pennies. I'm not sure it's financially worth continuing with Airbnb much more, I think its ship has sailed. 

[Fred13]

I wonder @Bryan10 if there will be less listings post Covid-19 and this will lead to higher prices, making the exercise worth it?

[Dale-and-Dustie0]

Oh, I get that one Bryan!  Everyone who I have spoke to said to ignore it unless you want to pay to have guests stay.  HA!