Booked at price lower than listed?

1

I’m new to AirBnB hosting. I just started hosting in July. I’m still trying to figure out how Smart Pricing works.

I have Smart Pricing turned on and I have set my Min-Max range to $73-80.

My understanding of this is that this means the rates will be adjusted within that range.

However, today, I got a booking and it was for $59/night. How can that happen if my range is $73-80?

I checked the calendar dates and looked at the price per night settings and there is this one week where the prices are listed between $59-$69 / night–but I have never set my range that low.

How do I prevent this? Is this being caused by the Smart Pricing being on? Is it better to just turn Smart Pricing off?

2

I am just guessing but maybe you had some extra promotion (discount) as new host , for example maybe you gave extra discount for first 3 guest, airbnb tries to promo that one on new hosts. Could be a number of other reasons, you can choose dates in the calendar that the smart pricing doesn’t apply to, weekly discount, etc. I doubt it’s a glitch, never had a pricing glitch I 10 years of hosting happen to me.

3

I personally don’t recommend smart pricing. I find that their rates are usually too low plus I have read other’s that have issues with the coding. I just manually adjust my rates as needed based on event, availability and what the market is getting based on my manual searches.

4

I like smart pricing. I am inclined to think that @balivilla has hit the nail on the head however and that it was some new host promotion. It’s a long time since I started with Airbnb but I imagine that someone here will be able to tell you how to opt out?

There are quite a few hosts here who think that smart pricing is the work of the devil but it’s always been fine for me.

A couple of things though.

  1. It’s important to keep your eye on it at first until it gets to know you (for want of a better expression.) It’s only a basic computer program so it doesn’t know your place the way you do.

  2. I think that your range is a bit too limited. I’ve found that it sometimes put prices far higher than I would and it gets booked at those high prices. I think that at first, I had 140 - 300.

  3. The program knows nothing about events in your area or when your busiest times are so be sure to put prices up manually for those. After time, it gets to know more about what your pricing should be

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5

I know if a person just searches without specific dates my listing has a price based on one week discount posted. Do you have a deep weekly discount?