What is it for?
What are the advantages or disadvanges of having a lower or higher base price?
I have vastly different prices for different dates. These override the base price anyway.
Interesting questions !
A lower base price could attract more people to your listing, 
but once they are attracted they may be (very) disappointed by the actual price. 
A higher base price could push loads of potential guests away but could attract the right kind of quality guest 
who then is presently surprised 
by the slightly lower actual price, which in turn could make him wonder 
why all of a sudden it’s priced lower, which in itself could again turn him off 
.
Probably the best thing is just to have your place listed at the right price. Sorry for this non-statement that won’t help you along at all 
. Again it are very interesting questions and I’m also curious to see other people’s opinions.
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Once our listing went weird and was showing the price at twice what it was in reality. We still got bookings so I guess they were pleasantly surprised at the correct total 
I also think that it isn’t a good idea to surprise guests with a higher price.
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As far as I’m aware, the base price is shown to guests for your property if they haven’t put dates in the search filter. I’m sure there are advantages/disadvantages to having it higher/lower but I haven’t worked them out yet. Maybe I never will.
JF
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I’m not sure I even get what the base price is supposed to do.
It’s the price people see if they are just browsing without entering specific dates or a guest count?
It seems like it cannot be higher than your lowest price for a specific date.
I tried to set it to 180. It keeps showing up as 150. I did set some dates to 150 during a period when it would be super convenient for me to host, to attract people. Is that why the base price won’t go any higher no matter what I set?
EDIT: Figured it out. Base price can’t be higher than your lowest price for specific dates.
At this point I’m just confusing myself and am going to have a coffee.
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If you’ve set Air to automatically allow bookings and therefore set prices up to 6 months in advance then it will fill in the new dates with the base price. This is not a good thing if it is doing this 6 months before a holiday or the start of your busy season so always update you calendar before it does. From One Who Knows 
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Just wanted to add this about base price. I randomly had it at £200 when I started which is my weekend price. Then I forgot about it. Found it few days ago in my settings so I thought I’d change it to £55 which is my weekday rate so I can attract more people. Anyway! Airbnb replaced all the £200 it found in my calendar (i have it open until May) with £55 without a warning!!! I realised when someone booked for a Saturday in January for £55!! I had to manually go through all dates again. Nightmare. And had to cancel the person abusing the “dont feel comfortable” … sorry mate 
I went through this when hooking up to Airbnb through Lodgify. Eventually, they told me that when potential guests were searching with no date range, the price showing beside my listing would be the lowest day rate in the next 30 days from the date of the search.
Therefore, I now have set a low rate Monday at least once every 30 days so that if guests are searching during high season for a low season break, they at least check out my listing.
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I realise this is probably a bit late for you now, but if you go further down the page from “Nightly charges”, you’ll see “Standard fees and charges”. Within that section you can set a seperate weekend price, i.e. Friday and Saturday.
JF
Thanks but I actually took the time and searched the market for every single weekend until May and manually adjusted the prices before the incident. So it was only replaced for 3 Saturdays that happened to still be £200 but still had to go over every date just to make sure. My post was just a warning to other hosts to be careful when changing their base price.
I have been noticing the same thing. My prices vary dramatically but my base price is meant to be $180. However, yesterday the listing was showing $165 (which was the price for tonight). Today I lowered it to $155 which is the price it is now showing. So it seems that if you don’t put dates in and tonight is available that becomes the listing price. This isn’t good as it is not often as low as $155.
It also now brings up the question what happens if tonight is booked what price does it supply? So I went to another one of my listings where the next available night is Thursday. It’s not showing the base price but the price for Thursday night.
It looks like the base price no longer has a bearing on the listed price if you don’t put dates in. Very confusing for the guest.
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