(A) Higher Rates and fewer bookings or (B) Lower Rates and more bookings

Suggestion: Higher rates on weekends, lower rates M-F. I just made this change and we’ve booked 2 additional bookings for this month (one single night, one 4 night).

L

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I’d rather have fewer guests at a higher price. My only one night booking was a mistake as they caused damage and weren’t respectful. It costs me the same to clean for one night or three. But there are other costs. Yes the per day earnings appear higher, but your costs ie time, materials, laundry are higher. In our area all weekends are more expensive and minimum 2 days, 3 on holiday weekends.
Also one day bookings can take a prime day ie Saturday and leave potential guests who wanted the whole weekend looking elsewhere.

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OMG, Fred – You’re still on here! I have been absent for a while. Nice to see that you are still part of this forum :slight_smile:

@sandy2 One of the problems with necroing year old threads (and the reason I personally dislike the practice) is mistaking that old thread as current. :frowning:

Sadly @mearns is not back. Maybe one day :slight_smile:

I have been doing this for 2 1/2 years – started kind of low to get reviews ($175/night), and then have been increasing my nightly fee since then. What I have learned – when I am busy (I flip houses, so sometimes I am super busy, sometimes not), I have a two-night minimum. If I have the time, I will do the nightly bookings, as it does make $ sense, given that my cleaning fee is $70 (whole house – 850 square feet). One nighters usually do not require as much cleaning, but you have to account for the extra laundry. I adjust my prices all of the time. For my busy season (May through October), I put it at my highest possible nightly fee, which is $300/night S-T, $350 F,S. As I start to get bookings for those months, I monitor it closely. If I’m a week or two away from an open stretch of four nights or more, I start dropping the price $25 per night. But, that’s not usually a problem – I usually get solid bookings for the summer. When a summer month is pretty solidly booked, I drop the prices for the open nights to $200-$225/night to fill out the month. This is July – I have five unbooked nights, but they are mostly singles, and right now, I have a two night minimum, so they will not be booked (and I’m ok with that!). Thus, for July, 16% of the nights are not booked, 65% is booked at the premium price, and the remainder at the lesser price. I figure, it’s worth it for those few two-02.1in-between nights to make $400 + $70 (less Airbnb fees). For November through April, I keep the premium price until the end of the summer, then I drop it to $200-$225 night. That way, someone can book a year in advance at a premium price (which rarely – but sometimes does – happen). I also pay close attention to what is happening in my town, such as the ironman event, holidays, home football games for the University, etc. During those times, even in winter, I keep the prices high until close to the date, if it hasn’t booked. Hope this helps!

Awww, that makes me sad. He had really good insights.

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