Feedback results / Block – High Price – Cheap fake reservation

Hi everyone,

At the end of last year I made this topic Block dates OR put ridiculous price? Inspired by all that’s being said on this forum, I was doubting between 3 courses of action when we had to close shop for a few weeks. In the end I decided to try all 3 options to see if there would be any difference in the reservations afterwards.

I planned on analyzing occupancy until the end of February but unfortunately, due to circumstances (severe illness of SIL), I had to take one of the rooms of the market, so I only have analyzable data until February 4th.

Summary

We closed shop for a total of 27 nights.
Room #1: A family member made a (fake) reservation at the lowest possible price.
Room #2: I put a huge price of more or less $US 1000 in our calendar.
Room #3: I just blocked the dates.
After opening up we had 40 nights to analyze.

Why we should all take these results with a grain of salt? Or not?

The data is very limited and influenced by many other factors:

  • Not all our rooms are exactly the same. Room #1 has a private bathroom, and therefor has always been a bit more popular. Rooms #2 and #3 share two half bathrooms. Room #2 is only for people who want to share a bed. Room #3 can be prepared with two single beds or one queen. Because of the two single beds, it is popular with people who don’t want to share a bed.
  • In the beginning of the year I tweaked all 3 listings and made a 3rdlisting combining rooms #2 and #3. This combination only accounts for 1 night in the given time period. I allocated this night to both rooms.
  • I very regularly change the price of our rooms.
  • With these rooms we have only been on the market since June 2018. So there’s not a lot to compare.
  • We had one rather exceptional 7 nights booking in #3. Normally we have 1 – 4 nights’ bookings.
  • The last few months I haven’t been looking at our place in the search results, so I don’t know if there was a correlation between course of action – search results – bookings. Of course we can suppose there is.
  • Etc. …

Facts

Room #1 was booked 5 out of 40 nights. Occupancy rate 12,50%.
Room #2 was booked 11 out of 40 nights. Occupancy rate 27,50%.
Room #3 was booked 17 out of 40 nights. Occupancy rate 42,50%.

When comparing rooms:
Room #1 = 100% / Room #2 = 220% / Room #3 = 340%

CONCLUSIONS

Most likely it’s wrong to draw any big conclusion based on such limited data.

Long cheap reservation
Most surprising to me is the fact that our top performer room #1, became a total underperforming room, after having this long and cheap reservation. I believe that AirBnB has picked up on the fake occupancy and has acted against it: In December I made the reservation for more or less $US 1.50 a night, but when I tried to give a family member a low rate two weeks ago, the system wouldn’t allow me to go below +/- $US 10 a night. So there is definitely a change in AirBnB’s policy.

Sky high price
Room #2 had very little reservations last year, but I’m actually happy with the 27,50% occupancy rate, although of course this rate is still laughable. Was there a positive effect of the huge price drop? Has this caused a higher place in the search rankings?

Blocking calendar
Blocking the dates of #3 hasn’t caused any noticeable negative effect. An occupancy rate of 42,50% has made January+ the best month since putting this room on the market.

If this tiny and flawed research proves anything at all, then it has to be that just blocking off your calendar shouldn’t worry us that much :blush:, but feel free to add your own conclusions, thoughts… Or why not maybe even your own research :sunglasses::sunglasses::sunglasses:.

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Guthend, thank you so much for sharing your results! I have no experience to add, but this is really helpful information and so few of us have an opportunity to do such an experiment. I hope others chime in with their experiences, even if they’re just anecdotal.

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I literally have no idea whats going on in this thread.

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Click on the hyperlink in Guthend’s post to go to the first time the topic was discussed.

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Ok now I get it. Interesting.

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