Beyond Pricing raises $42 million to tell you what to charge on AirBnB

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Anyone here using it?

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I’m not using it, but I’d also like to hear from those who are.

I tend to not want to pay for anything I think I can do myself, but if Beyond Pricing’s algorithms can help me make more money with less work, I’m for that.

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@NordlingHouse

Thank you sharing the article

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I use smart pricing. However, I set the lowest amount because their suggested price is too low. It’s worked well for me when I ask for $200 a night and the program sets the price at $249 when someone books during a busy weekend.

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I read that article Thursday, but there were a couple that struck me as odd.

They make the following statements:

This is a half-truth since what platforms want is for you to rent your place as much as possible at the highest rate possible. It’s just that vacant nights have a much higher impact than low prices.

Given that Airbnb also takes a percentage, the motivations are the same, which means the algorithms used by Airbnb’s Smart Pricing and Beyond Pricing will eventually evolve into the something extremely similar, which also means that one or the other will go away.

Wait, what? His current business model is 100% dependent on the same risks that property managers have.

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I don’t understand these pricing services and I never have. How can any service know what I know about my listings, my finances, my debts, my assets, what’s going on in the area and what I offer???

And I really object to the writer’s comment “Most people just guess how to price their vacation rental based on minimal research, or take platforms like Airbnb’s suggestions that just want to maximize their own revenue”. It’s yet another example of an uninformed writer assuming that we as hosts don’t do our figures correctly - we just ‘guess’. Again, the media is portraying hosts as unbusinesslike idiots. (And hosts wonder why there are guests who try to take advantage) :roll_eyes:

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We use it for three of our properties. Although I do go into it myself and adjust our minimum price quite a bit depending on how much we are booked out. I like the fact that it syncs with Airbnb and VRBO very easily in one place and it does save me a lot of time (useful for three entire place listings).

What I don’t like is the billing. As it bills you monthly per the percentage based on booking transactions you made that month not actual reservations that took place that month. So we are paying for bookings that are sometimes a year in advance which can add up to hundreds more dollars per month than you’re taking in. For example: A particularly bad month of reservations with a popular season of bookings still to come could end up really putting you in a financial bind.

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That’s interesting. What if a guest cancels, does your next bill get reduced?

That almost defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? If the tool was doing the best job, wouldn’t IT adjust the price correctly?

Also, how you track that you’re actually benefiting from the service?

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I would have thought that quite a few hosts will be put off by that. I manage three properties too (one of them isn’t ours, it belongs to a neighbour) and it’s not unusual for people who are here for an annual event to book for next year while they are here.

Because we get a lot of our guests from abroad, they often book a long time in advance, often a year or more, especially if they are staying here pre- or post cruise.

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Not really because I set a minimum price and a base price. The minimum price is what I change based on current occupancy. But also sometimes on things Beyond Pricing doesn’t predict such as inventory of the market or a bad experience with a guest. It adjusts all the prices down the months immediately to accommodate that and that saves me time as well.

Algorithms will always want to set the least popular days to minimum price.

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Yes I would say this is a weighing factor. If another company came along with the same product and a better billing cycle I would switch.

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Someone on this forum said that as your nightly rate goes down, air service fee percentage goes up, hence the low-ball pricing advice from smart pricing. I wish I could find that thread.

I did not realize that airbnb can charge guests as much as 20% of the nightly rate for their service fee. Wow!

Edit: Here is that thread.
https://airhostsforum.com/t/airbnb-service-fees

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Yes, the guest fees vary and Airbnb isn’t transparent about what exactly makes them vary, but the driving factor is going to be some fixed cost per reservation (for customer service, employee salaries, computer equipment, etc.). For example, if the fixed cost is $5/reservation and the fee is 12%, then reservations with a nightly rate of less than $41.67/night looses money (on average). It would be fair if their fees were a fixed cost plus a percentage. E.g. $5 + 10% of the nightly rate, but we all know their goal is not to be the most fair, but to make the most money, plus we also know they are still really just making things up as they go.

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