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I have a handful of listings on AirBNB - have been using the platform a while - used to use Smart Pricing, but during the Pandemic, turned it off across the board and took manual control of my pricing.
Recently got a booking that was WAY out of pricing range (it’s a festival weekend, and the price the guest booked at was close to 50% of what I would price at - in fact, exactly 50% of what I listed the same nights for on VRBO).
On digging in, I was shocked to discover that Smart Pricing was ON for ALL my listings. AND all my manual holiday pricing was wiped out and needed to be re-done . Has anyone else experienced this? A glitch in the matrix? I’m very sure i did not enable it, and i don’t share the account with anyone.
I have definitely had it wipe out special pricing that wasn’t in place via a rule (ie manually entered, and even then it’s not right, just not as egregious). I’ve never had it turned on by itself. That sucks but also does not surprise me.
They are tweaking a lot of things with their winter rollout and I think we all need to be on guard.
BTW, I had my calendar open up to six months in advance and for reasons just like this I brought it back down to three months about a month ago.
I had mine opened forever, when I had set it to 90 days in advance.
Then IronMan announced a race here for next August (2022) and I got an instant booking, but I wasn’t opened. I told the guest that Air had opened my booking which was 90 days out, and could he please cancel without penalty while he could, since I didn’t know if I would even own the house a year from then, and fortunately he did.
Then I went in and once again set it to 90 days out. I check it frequently now.
I know already that there are NO rooms for Ironman Week next August. And of course I have raised the price and added rules so that I won’t get a 2 or 3 day stay blocking the full week. Most of the folks that got booked had 5 or 6 day stays.
Yeah, I try to check settings at least once a week. Not many advance bookings now, and I don’t expect most to be more than 30 days out if my partial 2021 summer is a post pandemic trend. If Omicron turns out to be an even worse variant, the travel industry will be hammered again.
I’ve kept my calendar closed, only opening a few days in advance. And when I do I’m getting bookings/inquires that aren’t ideal. I can barely know what I’m doing next week much less months from now. I’m really not looking forward to all the acrimony if Airbnb has to go through another big wave of cancellations.
WOW! I just checked mine! Mine are closed until spring but one of them changed without my consent!
I NEVER user smart pricing.
Once I noticed that it had changed to auto booking but fortunately I had an opening so I accepted it. After that I checked a lot to make sure it didn’t auto book. Crazy!
Honestly, some days I feel like I should close my AirBNB account and do all my business through VRBO. I wonder what kind of hit I would take, and when (if ever) I would get back up to where I am now in terms of bookings.
There are just SO MANY frustrating things about AirBNB, including this kind of BS, but also their support is so bad and policies so unfair (in my personal experience).
. Has anyone else experienced this? A glitch in the matrix? I’m very sure i did not enable it, and i don’t share the account with anyone.