When price tips say raise your prises

I learned early on from these forums to disregard the price tips on AirBnB’s calendar because they encourage you to undervalue your listing and undercut yourself and your local rental market.

However, I have a new observation: the price tips are suggesting I raise my prices in July and August. Has anyone else seen this? Would you listen?

I feel like raising my prices any more might be asking too much for what I offer: a mother-in-law apartment in a fabulous location. I live near downtown Seattle, but you also have to deal with my family living overhead. I charge $150 a night in summer, and drop the price the week-of if I don’t have a booking yet. Price Tips suggest I go up to $160-180 a night in July and August.

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Are you renting a whole house or individual room? Price tips seems to have changed fairly recently and sometimes seem to be more accurate to where your prices should be (but not always).

I think Airbnb got so many complaints from hosts that they made some adjustments. I still wouldn’t use price tips. They don’t know local events that drive up demand.

I look at what hotels and other hosts are charging to get a ballpark idea of where I should be. I find many hosts undercharge though. For example, this weekend for an individual room, I’m at $95 a night, local budget chain hotel is $195 and up. Yet, I see many hosts at $35-$60. I think that’s too low and they’re leaving money on the table.

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I just posted about this recently. I too noticed this and I raised them. However, after a few days I feel that they are a bit too high. I don’t get booked out far in advance anyway but it seems that the pace of bookings slowed after I set all of the to price tips.

I find the little light bulbs to be useful. If nothing else it signals me not to lower my price because those days are being looked at. Overall my prices are a little higher than last summer and I’m getting just as many bookings by taking same day bookings. I don’t drop the price because of my last minute drive through traffic.

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I used to list as a “room in a house,” but made some renovations and added a locking door to separate my in-law suite from the rest of the house, so now I list as an “entire guest suite” that shows up when you check the “entire place” box.

I’m glad the price tips are starting to be more accurate, but I worry there is a point where the recommended price is too high for the amenities I offer. However, when I plug in some dates for July and August weekends, I see I’m in the last 10 “budget” places that haven’t been booked, even this far out.

Is there an easy way to track hotel prices than putting in individual dates at individual hotels?

Apologies for missing your post, Karma. I didn’t see it when I searched if anyone else had posted on this topic.

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Do you ever wonder why you get booked at all? I see lots of places cheaper than mine that I’d gladly choose instead of my place.

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I am seeing some random, individual days, with price tips that are simply too high. Fourth of July weekend, Sunday night is “tipped” at $60 more than I would expect to get. Clearly it is not taking into account that the place is not available for the full holiday period since I have a group arriving on the 5th. It also doesn’t explain why the rooms are not booked yet, in a destination that people plan for in advance or that I require three nights during the month of July.

I am being told to drop my prices for particular dates, won’t be … because they are already booked!

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I noticed the price tips were too high. I tried “smart pricing” for one day thinking Airbnb might show my place more if I complied. I switched it back - I noticed the prices for a few weeks from now were too high. I won’t get advance bookings if my price is too high. Of course, you can just set a maximum but I only have the one listing that I rent, so I can just tinker with it. I don’t like the fact that people can look at your calendar and see your future prices.

My price tips? Look at other Air listings in you part of your town. Not just the prices, but what they are offering and how often they seem to be booked compared to what you offer and what your price.

There are a couple places with a mile of us, renting for 1/3 what we charge ($35 vs $95) in High Season. But with our place you get pool privileges and a prepared breakfast that the others don’t offer that. Breakfast for two around here is certainly worth $35-$40 all by itself. Makes me the better bargain.

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We have price tips for next March (high season in the Caribbean). We charge about $800 a night for six people. The price tip says I should raise the rate to $2200 (yes, US dollars and per night)!

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It’s not often that I don’t agree with @KenH but I’d say ‘My price tips? Ignore other Air listings in you part of your town.’

I honestly don’t care what others are charging. I know our rentals better than anyone else. The apartment directly below one of ours is also on Airbnb - much cheaper. But they don’t supply the extras and the services that we do.We are fully booked, they are not. Despite the lower price. Truly, low prices aren’t the be-all and end-all.

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NICE!

I’d love to make $2200 a night! :heart_eyes::money_mouth_face:

We’ve also gotten a price tip to raise the rate on certain dates, let it ride and got bookings! At the same time, other dates could simultaneously go way down. Think it makes the listing more competitive on the platform. ?? I later learned that some of the dates where they suggested a (much) higher rate, there were some festivals, spring break dates that I was unaware of—good stuff!!

How far are you from Husky Stadium? If you are near the stadium or near a light rail station, you should raise rates every weekend the Huskies have a home game. 2 of the 4 Air places where I have stayed in SEA told me that they make their best money on Husky weekends. One of the rooms I booked was half the cost it would have been if there had been a UW football game that weekend. Oh, and my advice is to charge what the market will bear.

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Thank you! I’m about 1.5 miles from Husky Stadium. It’s about a 5-10 minute drive. Good idea to plan ahead for the game schedule. I get SeaHawks fans though I’m much further from the SoDo stadiums.

Probably Seahawks fans from Juneau, where 1200 people turned out at Mendenhall Glacier for a 12th Man picture the week before Seahawks Superbowl.

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I’ve been getting weirdly high price tips for weekend nights in the summer.

I searched and no other host in the area is charging so high on the dates in question.

Below the price tip it says that they don’t have enough data…

Don’t really understand it.

You really don’t need to :slight_smile:

I don’t see price tips (is that because I use IB? I think so) but if I did, I dread to think what they’d suggest to me.

The apartment directly below our main rental is about half the price. In the building next door to us, there are some rooms (ours are apartments) that are crazy money - really low. So as far as the price tips computer is concerned, ‘listings near me’ are half or even a quarter of our prices. So what? Our value for money is truly better.

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I have IB and get crazy low price tips lol the time. I look at them for a laugh and then proceed to RAISE my price and then often get booked.

Good for you :slight_smile:

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I had to wake up the thread because I am amused and it’s relevant.

Here are annotated price tips for the same exact house, same exact dates, on two listings using different minimum length of stay settings and pricing settings. I might be able to understand why it would give a newer listing different price tips.

However, I wouldn’t expect it to suggest significantly lower pricing for the listing with a solid star rating and history of getting significantly higher prices than for the new listing with no cred and twice the length of stay minimum. I would expect it to recommend the new one be the lower one if it’s going to be a different recommendation.

TL;DR: Price tips are crap.

Above is what they recommend on the listing that I get an average of $199 a night on here, a few dollars higher on VRBO … Below are their recommendations for the new listing, same house… same dates…

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