Pricing tools for vacation rentals?

Question

Anyone tried any of the pricing tools for your vacation rental (smarthost.me, beyondpricing.com)? Any feedback on how they perform? Do they increase your vacation rental revenues (and not just occupancy)? Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Johan Erikson · Answer

Thanks for all the feedback. I did get a demo of Smart Host yesterday and it seems like a very useful tool. They are starting up, they are small, and there is more functionality to be added, but they seem very flexible and accommodating to your needs, so I signed up for the service. I still have not analyzed all the data they sent over, I'll be pouring over that this weekend. Over time as they build their historical data the tool will only become more useful (I believe). I also signed up for beyondpricing.com. I'll keep you posted on how things work out and hopefully I can report back on higher overall revenues in a while. The key is to drive higher revenues, just not more bookings, that's the easy part. Thanks, Johan

John Underwood · Answer

I personally use supply and demand and I constantly see what my competition is charging and how full their calendars are with there set pricing.

John

Nick Persico · Answer

Thanks for the kind words @William Stokes. :-)

I'm Nick, one of the co-founders of Smart Host. Happy to answer any questions about tracking your competition on HomeAway, VRBO, or Airbnb. Our tool can save you a ton of time on research, but I can help answer questions on how you can do it yourself.

Maged Bishara · Answer

The problem is manually having to update the pricing among various sites if you're dynamically pricing. That's a lot of time spent.

If the platform can help with that issue then it would be really interesting.

John Underwood · Answer

@Leigh Ann Smith, I look a year out on Homeaway and VRBO on properties that are similar to mine, same general location.

Find 5 or so that are comps. See if they all only have a weekend booked for October.

If none are close to full then I might get my price down towards the bottom of the average price until things pick up. If October starts to fill up then check comps prices again and see if you need to raise your rates towards the top of the average price.

John

Leigh Ann Smith · Answer

@John Underwood, how do you check the occupancy calendars of your competition? I think it was VRBO I was looking at that showed an availability calendar, but I wondered how far in advance you could look for helpful data. In other words, if a property comparable to mine only has 1 weekend booked for October so far, is it too soon to make any projections based on that?

William Stokes · Answer

Hi Johan. My company uses a VR management software that has a dynamic pricing tool integrated, but I was able test out smarthost and I honestly love it. There's a lot of value in using their tool because it gives you the highest price it believes you can find occupancy at. It allows you to manually enter the homes that are your actual competition, and see their stats to adjust your rates off of. The only downside to it is that since it is new, the pricing strategy is based on current trends in your local VR market, and it is not crossed with historical data, because it will take them some time to build the historical data into their pricing algorithm. But based on my experience with it, it is extremely valuable for a serious VRBO and even a VRM.

Pricing tools for vacation rentals?

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