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As a vacation rental host on Vrbo, Airbnb, or other platforms, you know that a bad booking can cost you precious revenue. But what if there was a way to eliminate the risk of sacrificial bookings and ensure you're always priced for success?
In the ever-evolving world of vacation rentals, staying ahead of the curve is imperative for property managers and hosts. Earning your fair share of bookings and revenue looks different than in years past.
What are Sacrificial Bookings?
Not sure what sacrificial bookings are? Let’s say a huge event is coming to your area, but you haven't adjusted your prices accordingly. As a result, you end up with a booking for your vacation rental at a much lower price compared to demand levels. Now that the booking is done, you’re left with little to no options to recoup that missed revenue.
That’s what we call a sacrificial booking. Previously impossible to completely eliminate, we now have a solution that puts you in complete control of your pricing with little effort.
How Do They Happen?
Sacrificial bookings happen when a host is unaware of a major event or happening in their market, and they happen more often than you think.
Recently, a Vrbo host with a vacation rental in Paris received a booking for dates around the 2024 Olympics happening this summer. However, they had not updated their pricing in time and received a booking for a lower amount. Another host on a popular vacation rental booking website received a low booking for their vacation rental for dates around Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour dates happening in their market.
The hosts in these situations were not using advanced revenue management data and tactics, so they missed out on maximizing bookings and revenue for a major event in their market. Not only did they lose out on revenue, they also lost the trust of their guests: Both of these hosts tried to adjust prices after the booking occurred, reaching out to the guests who booked and asked for them to pay more.
What Should You Do When You Get A Sacrificial Booking?
First, we do not recommend trying to change pricing after a booking. Instead, we recommend avoiding them all together.
Now, for the first time, vacation rental hosts have access to real-time consumer search data. Search Powered Pricing, or dynamic pricing powered by real-time search data, uses consumer search data to identify trends in guest demand and automatically adjust your prices.
Here's how it works: our algorithm crunches longer-term trends and daily search patterns to instantly identify changes. This means that if a popular concert or event is announced and people start searching for accommodations, our system adjusts your pricing right away to capture the increased demand.
How Search Data Helps You Avoid Sacrificial Bookings
As hosting vacation rentals become more and more competitive, it is crucial to automate search data into your revenue management strategy to stay ahead of the competition – especially for high-demand periods and events.
With Search Powered Pricing from Beyond, your rates are automatically adjusted in real-time based on search data. For example, when Taylor Swift announced her 2024 tour dates in the United States, one of our customers in Miami experienced a 1400% surge in website searches for days surrounding the Miami concert. Because our customer was utilizing Search Powered Pricing from Beyond, their vacation rentals were priced accurately for both maximum bookings and maximum revenue.
And it's not just concerts – when tickets went on sale for the Paris Olympics, we saw only slight demand increases at first, but the few weeks after saw searches explode by 688%! Knowing this, our Paris customers utilizing Search Powered Pricing can effectively maximize occupancy and revenue. In other words, their pricing is always aligned with consumer demand.
By using search data, hosts can better understand their guests' true demand patterns and adjust their pricing for maximum bookings. Search data can provide real-time insight into demand patterns and help hosts optimize their revenue potential. Want to learn more? Reach out to us today!
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