Has anyone else had this issue? I have set custom higher pricing for several dates that are special events, yet those prices on weekends keep randomly getting reset by Airbnb and replaced with my weekend pricing. I have had this problem since Summer 2016 so it’s a long time glitch that hasn’t been resolved yet. Wondering if others have experienced this and what I might be able to do about it. I have had to call Airbnb about 5 times so far to have them cancel bookings that people have made during events at 1/4 the price I set. But I don’t want to turn off weekend pricing because I still want every other weekend date of the year set at those weekend rates. Super frustrating!!
Stop using the customizing tools. Manually set your prices day-by-day and week-by-week – it only takes a short time to manually set things for an entire year ahead. And if you discover new events you want to up-price for, it only takes seconds to change those day prices.
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Yeah I guess that is probably my best option at this point.
I would quit using smart pricing right away. Like KenH says, it is better to set prices yourself. I set my prices custom to the day of the week and events going on. If it is slow, I lower the price to rockbottom - say a Monday/Tues?Wednesday in January. I dropped my original price from $169 to $99 on a few days and $110-129 on other slow days. Smart pricing just mucks things up by not taking into account the vagaries of your listing and town. It wanted me to offer my space for $54 on one night! Ridiculous. It got booked at $110 just the other day.
Or do both. I’m very happy with smart pricing but I manually adjust the prices for events, holidays etc.
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Smart pricing is a joke!! It is based on discounting based on a price you set. It has NOTHING to do with the value of your home!! Not the location, number of bedrooms, reviews, NOTHING. So if you originally underpriced your home, then forever after that it will suggest you keep going lower. My proof: I have a 3 bedroom house that I also rent as a 2 bedroom house by blocking off a room. Today my “smart price” wants me to rent my THREE bedroom for THIRTY percent LESS than my two bedroom. AND IT IS THE SAME HOUSE. The only differece in the listings is the more expensive tip is for one with the photo of 3rd bedroom missing.
PICK several listings similar to yours and see what they are getting. Look at their calendar. If they are fully booked and have large number of recent reviews - then that host has a good feel of the local market. See what that host is doing.
Also if everyone did cutrates, then in the end it will hurt the entire business. May seem good for you in short term, but not long term.
PS They know nothing about local events. We book out a year in advance for ST Paddys in Savannah. We get about 30% more for that weekend. The smart price did not recognize this until January. So idiots using smart pricing could have rented their place for 30% more from March - December 2016.
Exactly, You set the minimum price and it won’t go below that price. At least, that’s always been the case for me. Otherwise, why would there be a minimum price setting?
I don’t use smart pricing, I just have the weekend price set to be different from the standard price. I also go in and manually lower my rates when i have dates I want to fill in slow times. It is just the weekend settings (Friday, Saturday) that are overwriting my custom pricing. I have set the price I want for weekends, but I don’t want them to overwrite my higher prices for event dates.
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