Smart Pricing from airbnb?

I think there’s some confusion here. It doesn’t set any prices lower that the base price you enter, which for me, is the normal daily rate. If I want to discount, I can do that manually, just like before. Or raise prices for special events, of course. So because I only have higher prices for holidays and events, which I would be doing manually anyway, it makes no difference - except possibly in the search algorithm.

Unless it’s not working properly for me :slight_smile:

I tried to explain this up-thread. To quote myself, “The situation I’m trying to explain is where Smart Pricing suggests prices that are above my minimum, but still lower than I know is necessary.”

Maybe an example is necessary…

In my market (a vacation spot a couple of hours from a conurbation) weekends and holidays are very valuable, and weekdays much less so. Tues & Weds often need to be listed at $150/night to get filled up, but weekend pricing rarely needs to drop below $190/night.

If I give $150 and $250 as my min and max for Smart Pricing it suggests that I don’t charge more than $185/night all July, and suggests <$155/night for most weekdays. I would be throwing away money if I didn’t go through and edit up most of those suggestions. Increasing the min price wouldn’t fix the problem, it would just cause midweek days to be over priced, while weekends would stay too cheap.

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Every host is different :slightly_smiling:

I’m accustomed to spending a couple of minutes every day adjusting the calendar. For example, I am very concerned that we have a couple of days still available at the end of next month so today, I’ve slightly lowered the prices for those days. I keep an eye on it all the time and tend to adjust prices daily especially when I find out about local special events, conferences and so on.

To me, a few minutes every day is worthwhile, but I understand that this doesn’t suit every host.

I adjust my prices regularly too. I’m not saying I don’t have time to, I’m saying that using Smart Pricing doesn’t reduce the amount of time I need to spend doing that, which is precisely what it’s designed to do. This is not a matter of hosting style, it’s just that the algorithm doesn’t work well for my market.

Because you have repeatedly countered my complaints, I presumed that the algorithm was working well for you, but if you’re still having to manually edit the calendar every day, is that really the case?

If I were a new host and I’d read positive reviews of Smart Pricing online I probably would have trusted their suggestions. If enough new hosts in my market do that it will drive the price down for us all. If that’s not the case in your market - great! But please recognize that this is my concern, and it’s a legitimate concern in my market.

I just checked my prices - they are all my base price with no variation from day to day. They don’t seem to be doing anything for me!

Hey, it’s not an argument :slightly_smiling:

As you say, it doesn’t work for your market but it does for mine. It’s a good idea in this forum for everyone to express their opinions so that readers have a balanced view. I would always want to adjust the calendar daily because in this area, prices fluctuate so much depending on events and demand.

I really DO recognise your concern but that doesn’t mean I can’t give my own views, right? So many aspects of the Airbnb system suit some hosts but not others - such as Instant Book. Some love it, some hate it. To each his own - we’re all different which is exactly how it should be. The system at least gives us the choice.

I’ve been using it on one of my properties. It feels like I’m either priced too high or leaving money on the table. I think it’s more accurate if there are more hosts around you, so I wouldn’t recommend it if you live in a neighborhood with, say, less than 20 listings in a 3-mile radius :frowning:

I just turned mine off. All it was giving me was my base price, no variation…

Then I found out why. For a two bedroom ‘semi-private’ apartment - kitchen, private bath, nice breakfast, all 5 star reviews (for now) with over 50 guests, ‘super host’, my ‘price tips’ are now between $50 and $60. What is the emoji for ‘vomit’?? I can only assume its because of the rash of listings that pop up where you can see an old bed with old blankets with a filthy wall for $30 a night - no reviews. Meanwhile hotels in town with much less space and privacy go for hundreds.

I know my price tips are always going to be off because I can’t list it as private apartment so my only choice is ‘private room’ listing ‘one bedroom’ though I have two bedrooms.

I think I’m going to just have to list it as private home and repeat everywhere that they are living with us. I hate to do that, but honestly, A LOT of places do this. It would actually not take that much money to put the door between them and us. (FRUSTRATED).

sigh. At no point did I try to undermine your experience of the tool. However, again and again you have suggested that those of us who found the tool unhelpful were misusing it, or mistaking one pricing tool for another. I know that you were just trying to help, but I hope you can see why those comments just came across as patronizing.

Hey DC, I have the same problem and I wrote Airbnb about this. I.e. you really can’t advertise a whole house if you live there, and if you have two bedrooms you have to put the additional bed(s) in the “public space”. Airbnb would have you list two bedrooms as two separate listings and I think that is totally unacceptable, whether I’m a guest or whether I’m a host. Airbnb responded they would send my email up the chain of command but no promises. Maybe if more people write them about this unacceptable presentation of listings of private rooms (more than one room in a house shared) they will fix and give a different platform.

I also laugh when I saw the tips for my place at 120$ a day. I charge 300. The 120$ a day is what a hotel room costs on a Fri-Sat in my area. My listing is a 2 story house with 4 bedrooms and 2 and a half baths. It seems that ABB is more set up to rent rooms than houses.

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ABB works for me because I AM renting just a room (and a bathroom). That was the original philosophy of ABB. Renting out a spare space. Now it’s invaded by real estate investors and long established motels/hotels/cabins. There is just a different demographic that wants either place.
A family on vacation is going to book your place because it’s more hospitable, family friendly, more like home but maybe even a bit nicer, and livable to them than any hotel room could ever be (my sister for example would much rather, and does, stay at a place like yours when she visits Georgia each summer ).
The solo traveler or couple that embraces the philosophy of the sharing economy, wants a more personal experience, at a reasonable cost is going to book with my listing.

So-called “smart” pricing is anything but. Airbnb’s Smart Pricing asks me to drop my rents by 10-50% of my usual rate. Given that I am a renter, paying ridiculously escalating San Francisco Bay Area rents, and I offer free, organic breakfast, and other niceties, at the rates they suggest, I would LOSE money. Unfortunately, the Smart Pricing tool drives all of the prices in an area down, and those of us with higher expenses have to drop our prices to compete with the folks who use the tool and don’t mind the lower prices. Smart Pricing is about to doom my Airbnb. I was booked nearly solid, year-round, for the 5 years prior to the Smart Pricing coming along. Now I’m struggling just to cover the operating costs, and eek out a little extra. The dandy little paycheck that used to cover my college tuition is a thing of the past. And I’m a 5-star rated Superhost. Thanks, Airbnb Techies: you’re driving guest’s nightly stays up by driving host’s revenues down. Since guests pay a much higher percentage of their booking fees than hosts do, it makes good business sense for Airbnb. For hosts, not so much.

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Thanks, @Karen! Yes, I did communicate with someone and they were very enthusiastic about this.

I just had a booking tonight, my first after changing it to ‘entire home’, and I felt uncomfortable about it.

Really, the reason I changed it was because I wanted valid ‘price tips’. Now I see that they are, sadly, worthless, so I may just change it back. Some of my guests have chosen our place specifically because they wanted the ‘sharing community’ vibe.

I think I will write again!!

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yes, yes, and yes. It is disappointing. They are not considering amenities at all, or ratings and experience. I think they are just looking at all the cheap places run by amateurs (and I was one once, I admit!) and thinking we should all slum-down to that level.

I really was stunned that my ‘private room’ was soliciting the exact same price tips as ‘entire home’.

The bottom line is, we are on our own with pricing. We have to research what hotels and other airbnbs are charging, pick our price, and then stick to it.

Also, it was interesting, once I switched to ‘entire home’ I came up lower in the search results!

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The original philosophy was an air bed on the floor. Extra room in the house came along at sometime. Also someone offering a house is in no competition to ones only looking for a room to rent. Different clientele. Hell ABB even has an island that one can rent and they love to advertise that fact along with when Justin rented from the site a real nice place to stay.

Same here. I haven’t really noticed a difference. Prices pretty much stay at the minimum I set. We will see as we get more into the peak season.

I use Pricelabs for dynamic pricing. Happy with it so far.

I have been using it since day one and i lost a bit of money at the beginnign but if you put your minimum rate, use the extra field for week end rate and and fluctuate your cleaning fees it can be a good option. to avoid people booking high season rooms for normal prices i just block my calendar or you can use the seasonal pricing option for seasonal pricing and put prices that are soo high you know nobody will book. all in all its not a bad tool but it takes some time to get used to it and understand how it can help you. most important is to decide what would be your min rate for weekdays and week end. if you edit the room rate per night manually, be carefull that the prices sync automatically so you see that the price you set has been changed automatically

also for a same rental amout (lets say 120) i get more bookings from a rate of 90 plus 30 cleaning fees than a rate of 120 without cleaning fee. i believe the lower rooom rate puts you in a better position in the search engine.

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