Are you using Smart Pricing?

[Nick]

Hi everyone, 

Price is one of the most important factors for travellers before booking. For Hosts, it is crucial to price their listing correctly, but it can also be a riddle, especially if they are only beginning their hosting journey. 

To get the price right, many refer to Smart Pricing and use it to their advantage (you can read how on this great post by @Ann72.)

Having said this, do you use the Smart Pricing feature, and if so, how? 

I look forward to reading your replies.

Thanks

Nick

[Katie1134]

Yes, we use Smart Pricing, but with so little success and I'm surprised Airbnb hasn't planned more for our scenario. Like so many others, we set the minimum at what we need to make it worth it, the maximum way high so we don't underestimate the ceiling for elasticity, and hope that Smart Pricing gets us more on busy nights.

However, like others have also mentioned, the algorithms don't always nail it: I assume they are limited to what must be their most common unit type (entire apartments or a room in someone's apartment). We run a guesthouse, which we have to file as "shared apartment." But it's more luxurious than a shared apartment, more like a 4BR boutique hotel or actual bed-and-breakfast (except we provide a shared kitchen but don't serve meals), and so we currently have the minimum at 2x the suggested Smart Pricing and we're booked solid -- thus we don't get to take advantage of Smart Pricing at all. It's frustratingly ironic, given that Airbnb has bed-and-breakfast in its name, but doesn't have a way to list actual bed and breakfasts and optimally take advantage of the tools.

Also, I would be a perfect key target for my own place as it's a true guesthouse, but I never use shared apartments when I'm a guest so I would never find us if I were searching. Bummer as we're probably missing out on a larger key target audience, which means we could be raising our prices if we had increased demand via better options for listing types.