Smart pricing January 2023

Smart pricing January 2023

Hey all, 

 

I'm looking at my calendar for January 2023, and I'm unsure of the smart pricing strategy.

 

My listing minimum is set to $150 a night, in San Francisco. I think I'm relatively inexpensive in this market, and I'm fine with that because I get really good utilization pretty far in advance, and knowing my booked income is really helpful.  In my experience so far, AirBNB does a fine job matching the price to the customer need. However, I'm looking at my Jan 2023 calendar and I'm fully blank, no bookings.

 

The nightly smart price in Jan is >$500. I'll happily accept that income if someone is willing to pay it, but I'm getting no interest at that price. 

 

I assume there's a method to this -- maybe a big event in town; projected travel for the Sierra ski season -- but I'm skeptical. 

 

I won't be doing anything with my pricing for a bit longer, trusting the process, but I'm curious if anyone else has experience with this kind of price spike having this kind of impact on bookings? Advice? Insight? 

15 Replies 15
Emiel1
Level 10
Leeuwarden, The Netherlands

@Alex8846 

Smart Pricing is just a simple pricing tool, it works fine with smaller margins. Maybe lower you maximum price limit to more reasonable price.

 

You can always turn off Smart pricing for a specific date or time period, by entering a fixed price in the calender.

So, I should not assume AirBNB is hiking that month's rates for a reason?  

Lenore22
Level 10
California, United States

I noticed we are all in the Bay area. I think there's something funky with our market (out rather in the algorithms' handling of our market). Since you asked, here's my advice:

 

1. Turn off smart pricing. It's not serving you right now. Just turn it off for January and set it to the prices you got last year. If you're not sure about pricing, Google it.

 

2. We're having a great snow year for listings in Tahoe/Shasta. You can push it out if you really don't need it rented, but if you want the security of having it booked, I would set your prices accordingly. And look at what's available outside of AirBnB. You know how it is... If you're used to getting a place for $200/night and all the places are  $500/night on airbnb, but you can still book a hotel for $150... What are you going to do?

 

3. Hosts all over are seeing this stagnation in Airbnb -- especially with all the anti-airbnb vibe all over social media. I have always been nicely booked: 95% of those reservations coming from Airbnb. Since the summer, this has fallen off a cliff and now 95% of my bookings are coming from elsewhere, and my next booking thru Airbnb isn't until mid-February. All I can say is thank goodness I'm not fully relying on Airbnb, because the marketplace clearly isn't.

 

I hope this helps,

Lenore

@Sara7821

I got in touch with support. They were nice but they couldn't really offer insight as to why the fluctuations were so extreme.

At the end of the chat, the best I got from them was, "As long as the dates are available rset assured that it will get booked."

I'm going to give it a little longer before I do anything. I'm also going to see if Airbnb reports on smart pricing utilization rates or something...

@Alex8846

Sounds good, thanks for the research!  I will do the same and give it a little longer to see what happens..

Sara7821
Level 1
Concord, CA

We live in the east bay and noticed the exact same thing. I researched local hotels and their prices are quite low during the month of January which leads me to believe its an Airbnb glitch or they are trying something new for the month of January?

Thanks @Sara7821

I'm trying to contact support this morning.

Same here.

Lorna170
Level 10
Swannanoa, NC

@Alex8846  IMO, smart pricing is stupid.  I would turn it off for a few months and see how your bookings go.  You can always turn it on later.

 

I tried smart pricing for several months.  It was a massive fail for me as it consistently dropped my pricing below the minimum I had set and never raised it during high demand dates. It does not appear to me to be seasonal, regional or in any way connected to holidays or annual events.  

Are you saying smart-pricing actually went below your set minimum?? I think that happened to me over Christmas!! My regular minimum is $80/night room rate and someone booked for $40 a night over Christmas Eve and day!!

@Deborah175  Yes, it did drop below my set minimum.  Which is one reason why I turned it off after a short trial.  Why would I discount below a set price (my profit versus loss line) just for the sake of "heads in beds". 

Deborah175
Level 9
Berkeley, CA

I’m in Albany/N Berkeley, and I’m seeing the same weird thing in January. My regular room rate is $80 and smart pricing has most of the month set at $156. Weirder still, for some reason a woman was able to book over Christmas at half price-/ $40/night!!! I suspect there’s some tech glitch with smart-pricing responsible for both issues. I called Airbnb and the guy was abominably unhelpful.

Jose6029
Level 2
Sunnyvale, CA

We have 4 AirBnBs and ran into the same thing. It was odd that across all 4, in different cities and states, that there were no bookings in January. We were using Smart Pricing, so that was the common denominator. We turned it off yesterday for January, and our properties started showing up in our searches.

 

I would suggest having someone do a search in AirBnB that would bring up your property. Do it for February and January as a test. If it shows up properly in February, but not in January, then that would indicate something off.

 

I'll need to monitor over the next few days/weeks to see if that fixed it, but it seemed to me like a good start.

 

Best of luck with yours.

 

JB

Jennifer1774
Level 5
Sacramento, CA

We have noticed the same thing!  The pricing for January and beyond jumped to our max for every single night.  I’m turning it off until Airbnb gets its poop in a group.