Latest Activity...
"But I'm not sure that these tools do substantially better than a few simple rules,"
I do not agree with this. There is a lot of aspects of seasonality, particular markets, events, how far out, ability to customize, and actual sampling in your market, and other things. And they are able to be practically "Set and forget", preventing you from having to test and tweak. My time also has value on 7 future properties. Even if they cost 1% of your revenue and brought an additional 2%, that would seem worth it!
"Are there any other similar tools that are used?"
EverBooked. But based on a lot of research, I would say Wheelhouse and PriceLabs are the top two, However, 1 of these 4 may be better in certain areas. For example, Wheelhouse coverage centers on a town 13 miles away from mine. But of course, that means they also average in properties in the opposite direction. And mine is a very specific, hip tourist town with whitewater rafting, amazing history, rail-trail, cycling, events, etc. So even being this close, it might price very differently from that town to my town.
For the accidental damage insurance, that's billed to you, not the guest.
You can add a surcharge to your bookings (or not -- some folks like to keep that coverage on the down low as they feel that people will respect the place more, not knowing they have insurance).
Can you owners upcharge the accidental damage insurance price that is billed to the guest?
In your market definitely is probably the main differentiator
The 30-40% is a nice claim, but another factor is time savings. I am not sold on the concept of simple rules X days out charge this amount or do this in certain seasons. I also don't want to spend time tweaking prices for 7 rentals.
If a dynamic pricer gets me 10% improvement for 1% of the revenue and I don't have to think about it, that has high value to me.
I am leaning towards putting several properties on PriceLabs and similar ones on Wheelhouse, and let them run a year. If one is significantly better, then put them all on that one. I don't believe a couple months is adequate and I am a very very patient person!
Some of it is about market coverage (ie. geographical coverage). We've been told by users that Wheelhouse and PriceLabs do not cover their market but BeyondPricing does. Vermont came up recently in one such conversation. BeyondPricing had coverage there but not the other two. That affects the situation as well.
supposedly a little more than that. Since they are plugged into other properties and can "see" occupancy your competition (and supposedly even hotel occupancy), they can tweak price based not only on how far/close in advance, but also based on competitor's occupancy AND they take into account local events. Like having some local festival that may increase tourism (like here in the smoky Mountains few times a year we have antique car shows that draw people from al over the place). Wheelhouse does it better. Like I said BP is very so so esp for my larger property, their price swings are too wildly unrealistic and they do not make suggestions on your suggested base price (Wheelhouse does using some algorithm and gives you several options). .
did using them increase revenue? a little bit but not by 30-40% as they claim. You have to be totally clueless about your own market and seasons and your own prices have to be totally wrong if using the tool increases your revenue by that much.
If I were to look into it, I would focus on Wheelhouse. BP is just not working that good at least not in my market. I would not spend time on it.
Yep, I haven't locked in to a dynamic tool for my properties yet either. It seems very cool, and I've looked at some of what it says to do and gotten some good ideas.
But I'm not sure that these tools do substantially better than a few simple rules, like -50% for < 7 days from arrival, -30% for < 14 days, + 20% for > 90 days, + 35% for > 120 days.
That's basically what all of these tools end up doing, right? I wish I had a couple of identical properties so I could run an a/b test between hand setting rates, rules based rates, and demand based rates.
We are talking with BeyondPricing and Wheelhouse to see if we can get integrated with them as well. Are there any other similar tools that are used?
You can't disable a single holiday on the list, but you can make all custom holidays. So you could unsubscribe from the holiday list and then add custom holidays for the ones you do want to hit on holiday fees.
I looked at wheelhouse, they say 1% per booking up to 10 properties.
The claim for using these dynamic prices is a yield mgmt. As hotels do. The claim is perhaps 30-40% more revenue.
Of course, I did not start yet, so not really sure of the truth.
Well the plus is that if I have no bookings via WH-managed site, I do not pay. Sounds like PL wants to pay whether I have bookings or not. I also did not understand whether paying for multiple channels pricing is extra on top of $49. Mine are year round, but at this point I do not think that my own pricing is so wrong that I absolutely need the pricing tool.
Depending on your monthly revenue, pricelabs can be cheaper or more expensive than wheelhouse. If you are seasonal, you can turn them off part of the year I think? It is fixed monthly.
3 properties 12 months a year would be you say $49 monthly? If they make 7500 monthly, that is similar to wheelhouse. Turn it off 5 months a year, it is much cheaper.
If you have property with high revenue, OK makes sense. If low revenue, WH makes sense.
To me, pricelabs and wheelhouse are the only two games in town.
Hi there! Is there a way to disable a single holiday? I'm subscribed to u.s. holidays however, and have set three nights minimum for holidays. However, there are some holidays where I would prefer not to require three nights. For example this ucoming veterans Day. I also have a holiday fee added to my rate during holidays but for this holiday I would prefer not to apply that extra fee. Is there a way to set this?
Thank you for assisting
Ella
I looked and they are way too expensive IMO. says $49 for 3 properties and I do not even know if that includes all channels + OR or ??? I I have used wheelhouse (good), beyondpricing (wild a..s guesses, don't like, will disconnect) for over a year. Wheelhouse charges .75% per booking, beyondpricing 1%. No bookings- nothing to pay, I like it that way.
being disappointed with beyondpricing (I used on VRBO, it just set lower than normal price for spring break, but sets some wildly high prices for other periods and they don't book), I think I will just use wheelhouse for trpadvisor (it never books anyhow) and go back to manual pricing like before. Just my 2 cents.
It's per property + an extra dollar to push to two.
Yes, I noticed that. I'm not sure if they charge per property, or per property pushed to a certain PMS/OTA. So I think for now while I'm trying them out I'll push to AirBNB only. Once OwnerRez can push to AirBNB and VRBO, I'll switch over to pushing to OR only and have OR push everywhere else.
Yep, that's the gist. You can also actually push to Airbnb right now because PriceLabs can do that push for you: http://blog.pricelabs.co/feature-update-mapping-listings-between-channels/
So, if I understand this correctly, I can use PriceLabs to update my OwnerRez pricing (provided I want to pay their fees), and then around the end of the year I can use OR to push those prices to AirBNB and VRBO, as long as I'm using the new channel integrations?
@BlueMtn: To sign up for Channels, go to the Billing section in the dropdown menu in the top-right. Hit "Change Premium Features" and turn on "Channel Management". We'll do a sweep of everybody that has channels enabled at the end of November and then apply the discount that way.
@Bennett: We're hard at work on knocking out those channels! VRBO should be in around the end of the year, with Airbnb to follow shortly.
@Maged: Thanks for the kind words! We spend a lot of time to try and simplify and standardize these channels... glad everything is working smoothly for you!
We can currently push to booking and TA (although TA requires the 5+). We'll have a channel bridge based rate push for VRBO, Air, TA etc. around the end of the year.
That's great news. I love everything that Owner Rez has to offer. It always feels very turn key compared to other solutions and they know exactly what we need before we do ourselves. I've tested the Beta version of the Channel Management and it's already more polished than many of the"established" Channel Managers out there (I've tested a few).
Channel integration is great but with missing out on full integration with all the majors (ie VRBO and Airbnb) and the fact that this is new and not fully integrated, I'm going to wait. When you have full flawless integration with all the majors, I'll def be signing up.
saw announcement, but where is the "sign up" to have 1st year for a $1/mo?
Awesome! Than you!
exciting, I have been using Wheelhouse (tripadvisor, Airbnb), and beyndPricing (VRBO). If I can use PriceLabs (provided that their fee is not too high) and then push Pricelabs driven pricing via channels to VRBO, TA, Booking etc , that would simplify life immensely! My observation lately beyodnPricing was wildly off the mark coming up with unrealistic prices. So I am hoping for better solution here :)
You're welcome *smile*
Don't forget to ask then to add OwnerReservations to their page. https://www.pricelabs.co/
It is a valuable Back link for you! Or any other dynamic pricer you use, usually have a list.
To others, PriceLabs has a good reputation. That is why I asked for them to be integrated.
We're very excited to announce our integration with PriceLabs! We've been hard at work on features to support this integration -- like the new Spot Rates concept that lets you "paint on top" of seasonal rates to set rates for specific days.
To learn more and set up the integration, follow the instructions in our PriceLabs Integration Guide.
PriceLabs is a powerful revenue management & dynamic pricing solution for vacation and short-term rentals. A data-driven approach, automation rules, and customizations to manage pricing and minimum-stay restrictions help vacation rentals increase revenues and save them hours in the process.
The customization options layer on top of market data help you automate things like cascading minimum stays (e.g., lower min-stay as a date gets closer, reduce min-stay to fill gaps), last minute discounts, orphan gap discount/premiums while still giving you good control over your pricing strategy. Learn more in this short video demo!
Yes. TripAdvisor Rentals and FlipKey are the same thing now. If you have a listing on TA Rentals, it will show on FlipKey and their other family of sites. They merged all that a couple years ago and now it's the same account. Basically, you need to follow our instructions in contacting them and saying you want to be use OwnerRez as a channel manager and then TA will convert you over to a new type of account (your reviews will be preserved) and give you a new Account ID to use. After connecting the TA channel in OwnerRez, read the instructions tab.
By "TripAdvisor", does that include Flipkey , etc?
We push all rules, rates and content for the listing. So the payment schedule (eg. 50% due up front, rest 45 days before arrival) is one of the things we push across. The TA channel settings in OR have some of these things broken out on the channel settings area. The rest come from the property data under the property menu. There are some channel-specific things (house rules, cancellation policy) that are unique to the channel, so those things are on the channel settings.
I am on pay per book with Tripadvsior, will it follow the settings set on OR or will Ta settings prevail (i.e per cent of down payment) etc.
