Lay My Hat

I'm pitching a slot at £69/night. I'm pretty sure the ABnB "HAL 9000" has based the following on shitty little cupboards being aggregated in the supply/demand mix.

What happened to the wisdom of supply and demand BTW?

The HAL 9000 says

Use price tip: £58
Why £58?

Driving prices up 󰈁
25% more guests than the yearly average are searching...(so drop my price?)
36% fewer homes than the yearly average are available...(so drop my price?)

Driving prices down 󰈂
84% of guests who were likely to book have already booked...(OK but demand is majorly outstripping demand)

Other information
Right now, there isn’t enough reliable data to show the median booked price of homes...(there never is)

Bollocks dressed up as analysis.

Conclusion

As HAL (2001 A Space Odyssey) may have said. "I'm sorry David this mission is too complicated for human judgement, I'm going to have to make your decisions for you so you keep to the cleaning and I'll do the pricing.....slave"

It’s utter nonsense. The prices they give around my way are about a third of the going rate for similar gite properties to ours; so we totally ignored them.

LotBoy47 wrote:It’s utter nonsense. The prices they give around my way are about a third of the going rate for similar gite properties to ours; so we totally ignored them.

Agreed. I am not prepared to let at their recommended prices, given that all their guests only want two nights. I am not prepared to do the single nights that they recommend.

Jonathan

I have never changed to their suggested pricing but have changed from allowing one night bookings to minimum two nights and in any case receive more bookings through BC despite the higher price to cover their commission.

I think I know better than they do. One trick I apply is to price for one person at a low price and load with a supplement for additional people currently £20/night and a cleaning charge that varies from £15 to £25. It seems to get people looking more closely at the property. We are certainly getting more stays doing it this way.

I only use ABB to fill awkward slots when a month has a few random days left. Less margin than through other channels but it is some revenue.

I find that the ABB clientele are one or two nighters - no more. The upside is that the cleaning requirements tend to be very light. Short stayers tend not to cook for one thing.

BTW it never ceases to amaze me that punters are so focused on rate per night that they blindly accept a cleaning charge without comment.

Stewart wrote:I think I know better than they do. One trick I apply is to price for one person at a low price and load with a supplement for additional people currently £20/night and a cleaning charge that varies from £15 to £25. It seems to get people looking more closely at the property. We are certainly getting more stays doing it this way.

The only problem with all these extra charges is that if the guest cancels, you will have to refund the cleaning charge (there is no cleaning to do), the extra guest charges (there are no extra guests) etc etc whatever your terms may say.

"The only problem with all these extra charges is that if the guest cancels, you will have to refund the cleaning charge (there is no cleaning to do), the extra guest charges (there are no extra guests) etc etc whatever your terms may say.
_________________"

Sure but it hasn't happened yet to us and is mitigated by strict/super strict booking terms so that some meaningful £amount does get returned. It seems to work for us.

In this increasingly funny world that we live in I believe you just have to experiment and if it doesn't work then do something else. One thing is sure IMO, just when you have discovered that thing that works, the game changes. I know its not for everyone to experiment.

I'm sure Netty from Knaresborough (who only lets Saturday to Saturday) will disagree but she was probably never in it for the money anyway.

This forum is so much better than the vapid Fb groups whose members' attention span would be shamed by goldfish.