EP035: Automatic Pricing for Your Airbnb Listing with Ian McHenry, Co-Founder of Beyond Pricing
Summary
This article discusses revenue management strategies for short-term rentals, emphasizing the importance of a structured pricing routine and analyzing booking data. Hosts should schedule revenue management, review booking behavior for pricing signals, and adjust pricing accordingly to optimize revenue. It also touches on how to manage your time and prioritize tasks as an STR CEO.
Key Insights
- •Early bookings can indicate underpricing or upcoming events, highlighting the need for dynamic pricing strategies.
- •Small daily price changes can increase exposure on OTAs.
- •STR pricing is dramatically harder than hotel pricing, due to factors like product uniqueness and operational constraints.
- •STRs can’t rely on last-minute demand as much as hotels.
- •STR volatility makes forecasting harder.
- •CEOs waste 30 to 50 percent of their time on low-value activities
- •Operators should let small fires burn to stay focused.
Action Items
- ✓Identify the biggest bottleneck in your STR business.Effort: mediumImpact: high
- ✓Review every booking to reveal pricing and demand signals.Effort: lowImpact: medium
- ✓Schedule revenue management, don't just react.Effort: lowImpact: medium
- ✓Recognize that STR rate drops must be deeper near arrival than hotels.Effort: lowImpact: medium
- ✓Use long-term vision vs urgency to prioritize decisions.Effort: mediumImpact: high
Tools & Resources
- →Freewyld Foundry: Learn more about Freewyld Foundry
Watch Out For
- ⚠Most hosts underperform not because they lack tools, but because they don’t know what to look at, when to look at it, or how to interpret booking behavior once it shows up.
- ⚠Being busy does not mean your STR business is progressing.
- ⚠Overloaded roles create hidden friction across the company.
- ⚠Forecasting breaks down when STR listings lose “momentum”.
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