My question too. I have a listing in the vicinity of several big music events in the Coachella Valley. I didn’t see a bump in prices during the season last year and I couldn’t really tell if there was one this year. In any case. I would never use the Smart Pricing thing for either of my listings because I’ve noticed they put prices way too low, especially for the desert place which were laughable.
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For sure! I just did a “pretend” booking for my desert place where Air has recently been automatically taking out local occupancy tax. You add on top of that my cut and then the cut Air gets (which I think is too much) and final tab is shocking to me. Of course the smart pricing app people will take their cut from your cut, which drives down your profit even more.
Does anyone out there know an automatic pricing service who only charge around 1-2%?
The only one I have found at that price does not cover my area, the only one that does charges around $15 per room, which is too much.
Beyond Pricing and Everbooked are ~1% I believe. One or both charge a small monthly fee on top as well.
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Say no to Airbnb’s “automatic pricing.” Along with other tactics IMO this is a flagrant attempt to force prices down to gain more of a market share–and more power for them while screwing you. After all, their take is 3%; do they care if it’s 3% of $90 instead of $120? Not really. But you certainly do.
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We have made a lot more money since we started using SP. It charges more than I would.
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If I used any of the encouraged automatic, instant or suggested price tips I’d be on average $30-50 a night down. At my own prices I’m booked 3 weeks a month. That’s more than enough.
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Hey @Henry_Lea, where is your property located? We can probably help you! (www.usewheelhouse.com)
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The suggested pricing from Airbnb is always way too low for us in Traverse City Michigan. But I see others in this forum have had Airbnb suggest higher prices and they were able to get guests paying the higher price. Good luck but if it were me I would still do the pricing based on my own local knowledge. Curt
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My place is at Bath, UK.
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Stunning site @quinnhubertz! Just signed up, will see how Wheelhouse works in London. Is there any forum/group for startups in the short term rental industry? Would be nice to collaborate.
@Henry_Lea We are now live in Bath, UK! You can now see your dashboard and price recommendations here: https://www.usewheelhouse.com/u/dashboard
Thanks Vincent! Great website yourself. We’re always interested in discussing ways to collab with other startups in our space. Drop us a line at hello@usewheelhouse.com.
Are you from Finland?
@Vera We’re based in San Francisco, and are hoping to have our services live in Finland by early 2017!
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At it’s core SP is ‘just’ an algorithm that predicts the trends. In order to calculate pricing trends accurately it needs enough data points (views/bookings). Therefore, if your listing is located in a large city or a very popular vacation area like LA, NY, SF, Paris, London,… with lots of properties, SP might be worth trying out. On the other hand, if your listing is in a smaller city or a rural area, SP may not have enough data to calculate the trends from. So, it just lowers the price to rock bottom.
Lastly: SP doesn’t factor for amenities or style of the listing. Even being in a large city you can still get massive variations on the prices on a week to week basis. That’s because the whole thing still looks only at the demand/price ratio. This is not good for people who strive to be above-average hosts with an exceptional listing (allowing them to charge a premium).
Bottom line: SP and similar algorithms may serve well to some hosts, but they will have to get a LOT better in order to be really useful for most of us.
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Can it use hotels data? regarding how much is booked?
Yesterday, they were suggesting $102 per night for next week. This morning that suggestion has dropped to $74. Yea. Won’t be doing that! I am rather enjoying our little break.
This is why I have banged on in many threads here about how important it is to ‘educate’ smart pricing by adjusting the calendar and answering the question that you’re asked when you do so. For me at first it priced every day at the minimum I’d set (for weekdays and weekends) but now it’s a lot more ‘intelligent’ and sets prices even higher than I would.
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Hey @jaquo, thanks for this. When SP sets the price, you can override manually the price (set by SP), right? If for example SP sets the price too low, you can go and override this. And that is when SP might ask you a question so it can “learn” your logic, right?