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Post by david on Feb 15, 2017 18:06:52 GMT
Hey guys! I’ve been hosting for a while now, and I’m getting a better and better idea of what it takes to provide an enjoyable experience. But the one issue I consistently struggle with is pricing. It’s impossible to know whether I’m pricing my property efficiently, or how prices should be increased/ decreased on certain days or around certain events. And this is something that comes up again and again when I talk with other hosts - there seems to be very little consensus on the best way to manage pricing. Manually pricing is a game of guessing, Airbnb's automated system massively underprices (in my experience), and I know of a few dynamic pricing services but haven't had enough exposure to know whether they're efficient. What are your experiences with pricing? Have you found anything particularly effective? What things should I be considering when pricing my property, or more importantly what will make the process easier? I wrote a brief blog post on the topic here, but I'd love to hear your guys thoughts.
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Post by High Priestess on Feb 15, 2017 23:23:04 GMT
Hey guys! I’ve been hosting for a while now, and I’m getting a better and better idea of what it takes to provide an enjoyable experience. But the one issue I consistently struggle with is pricing. It’s impossible to know whether I’m pricing my property efficiently, or how prices should be increased/ decreased on certain days or around certain events. And this is something that comes up again and again when I talk with other hosts - there seems to be very little consensus on the best way to manage pricing. Manually pricing is a game of guessing, Airbnb's automated system massively underprices (in my experience), and I know of a few dynamic pricing services but haven't had enough exposure to know whether they're efficient. What are your experiences with pricing? Have you found anything particularly effective? What things should I be considering when pricing my property, or more importantly what will make the process easier? I wrote a brief blog post on the topic here, but I'd love to hear your guys thoughts. So David, do you work for RoomDots, the company that your blog suggests is a genius at pricing? In other words I am wondering if this post of yours is a legitimate inquiry/question or is it a RoomDots advertisement disguised as a host question?
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Post by Mabel on Feb 16, 2017 0:47:22 GMT
Hi David,
Hopefully I can help with some insight. You say that you know of a couple of dynamic pricing services but have not yet had time to check them out. However, on your blog you write about your experience with room dots having been efficient and successful in that it saved you a specific sum of money. What is one of the other dynamic services you know of? While I am glad to hear that the service showed beneficial to you, it seems as though you are unsatisfied with it for some reason, as you are still looking for feedback about other approaches here on this forum. I don’t blame you...
I had a look at their website and have to say it looks a little fly-by-night, with a lot of vague spammy answers and little transparency. For instance, under menu options like “technology” in the How-it-Works category, the information just gives a useless graphic of icons titled Cross-Sync “the old way” and “the new way”… Haha!
For me personally, I would never recommend a service like room dots due to the fact that such an impersonal algorithm would in my mind be unreliable not only as it is likely leaving many relevant factors out of its data, such as the host’s own personal comfort level at any given time, but also because there is no trustworthy way for hosts to know if the pricing results are in any way close to appropriate. I don’t see that as efficiency. So I would be cautious if I were you, but again, glad you found it helpful.
Unlike you, pricing is not one of the most difficult aspects of hosting for me. While it is in fact difficult to guess, and yes Airbnb’s “Smart Pricing” does ridiculously under-price, for me, manual pricing has been the best most lucrative method. I have been hosting for nearly 5 years with an almost constantly booked calendar year around, and I just base my pricing on the simple aspects of competing rates locally, a reasonable rate of surge during popular events and most importantly, how much it is worth to me to host on specific days, and certain times of year. I won’t go lower than what I feel is worth sharing my space, regardless of what others around me are charging. I don’t agree with the whole “something is better than nothing”. To me it is not. To me, my quality of life is sometimes worth more than a little “something”. So my own answer to the title of your topic is no, pricing is not that complicated.
I see that you just created an account for his forum for this one question (and your blog share) but you may benefit more from reading other areas here which have very helpful input for all aspects of hosting.
I hope this helps, and if you like, I would also be happy to post this on your blog!
Best of luck and happy hosting. :-)
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Post by High Priestess on Feb 21, 2017 0:58:05 GMT
This post has been moved from "Central Gathering Place to Meet and Talk", where it was originally posted, to this board for Classified Ads, since it is an advertisement. David's post is a little dishonest/deceptive, because he is not actually a host who just happens to have a question about pricing, and just happened to find out about a company that has such a good solution to pricing that he now joins host forums only to post about them. It seems that David works for this company, Roomdots -- something which he omitted to say in either this post or his blog about this company on www.Medium.com. This connection of David to this company is evident because the email address he is used to register on this forum is of the form ________@roomdots.com I don't think it reflects well on a company when its employees join host forums pretending to be hosts who are not associated with the company, while touting its product/services. It's more honest to just come out and admit you're associated with the company.
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