Pricing your vacation rental

When your listing goes live, depending on your online travel agency, most likely being AirBnb or VRBO, you will be given recommendations on how you should price your rental. The default set up is to set a price and hope that you are not too high and not too low. Too high and you won’t get very many, if any bookings. Too low and you are leaving money on the table.

The other challenge is the day of the week or the season. A friday in July should not be the same rate as a Tuesday in January. So how do you know what to set it at? You don’t! But the good news is that you don’t have to, there is a solution!

One solution is to let AirBnb set the pricing. This is a good start, but if you really want to get more in tune with the market you should use a third party software. There are several on the market to choose from.

Dynamic Pricing Options

There are several options on the market to choose from. They all differ slightly in function and price and even what markets they are available in. They have different algorithms and are each unique in their configuration, but they all work on the same principles of supply and demand in a particular market. They are not all equal but it may just be personal preference on which you choose to use.

Here are the main options:

Beyond Pricing

Pricelabs

Wheelhouse

Is it worth it?

Like I said earlier, the options differ slightly but they are all good choices. The price models differ slightly between the options and the market data might be better in your area for a certain one. That being said, you will need to choose what is right for you. Once you have found one that works for you, the price of the service will pay for itself and take a lot of the guesswork out of it for you.