Thinking outside the box
Like many vacation rental owners and managers, Nightpricer’s co-founder and CEO Josh Sedivy needed a better way to manage nightly pricing for his growing rental portfolio. His St. Louis, MO-based ABODEbucks grew from just a few properties in 2015 to nearly 50 by 2018 and it was clear that the Airbnb & VRBO dynamic pricing modules just couldn’t deliver the desired results.
The Dynamic Pricing Journey
After testing with industry leaders Wheelhouse and Beyond Pricing, Josh chose BP because the platform’s features and flexibility could allow him to quickly test new ideas and strategies to maximize revenue.
Out of the box, ABODEbucks was very happy with the immediate results, seeing a quick increase in revenue of almost 17%!
But it wasn’t long until ABODEbucks’ clients started pointing out some serious issues:
* Future holidays and local events were often underpriced and, in some cases, not increased at all.
* Weekends were often underpriced.
* Seasonal pricing wasn’t dialed incorrectly. Slow winter months were being overpriced and peak summer months were underpriced.
Since Beyond Pricing gives the ability to manually edit calendars, ABODEbucks simply identified the nights that should be priced higher and locked-in increases. Along with slightly increasing/decreasing base prices each week based on the performance of each property, and instituting a graduating last-minute discount schedule, the BP workarounds produced regular revenue increases over 33%!
The remaining problem? Manually editing base, minimum, holiday, and event prices in each calendar for each property and booking channel every week was adding up to a ton of manhours. And as ABODEbucks continued to grow and workload increased, it was becoming more likely that adjustments might be missed, causing nights to go un-booked.
In short, the desired results could be achieved with Beyond Pricing, but the time, energy, and high commission percentages were unsustainable and inefficient for ABODEbucks.
The Solution
In 2019, Josh was introduced to developer Denis Angell and together they created an all-new nightly pricing platform called (you guessed it), Nightpricer! They’ve implemented and automated ABODEbucks’ successful pricing strategy, while adding in AI and machine learning to ensure that pricing goals are met and exceeded, every night of the year.
Fast forward to the end of 2021 and the results are glaring:
* Nightly Rates: +44% over 2019, +103% over 2020
* Occupancy %: +7% over 2019, +19% over 2020
* Average Monthly Reservation Revenue per Property: +36% over 2019, +86% over 2020
(View full case study)
Nightpricer is now available to Guesty, Hostfully, and Hostaway users, with more integrations coming soon! If you’d like to give us a try, check out our free 1-month trial, which includes all premium features.
Let’s go nightpricing!
Best,
The Nightpricer Team
*originally posted 7/8/2021, updated 12/29/21