Now that you’ve listed on Stays, one of the first tasks you ought to undertake is a pricing checkup. Things like your location, property type, seasons, events in your area, and more will all impact the nightly price you can charge.
Set your price too high and you might leave bookings on the table.
Set it too low and you might leave money on the table.
So how do you get your price just right? Stick to the steps below and you’ll find yourself on the right track.
Know Your Area
Research nearby listings that are similar to yours and make some sample bookings. Take time with this and really check out a handful to get an accurate nightly price range for your area.
Then, start out your nightly price somewhere in the middle of the range you’re seeing. Make sure that the prices you’re looking at show you all taxes and fees to get an accurate bead on what guests are paying to stay your way.
Get Dynamic With Your Pricing
Dynamic pricing happens when you keep an eye on demand in your area and adjust nightly prices accordingly. For example, let’s say demand for beds always outpaces supply in your area during July. You should jump into your host dashboard and up your pricing for that entire month.
On the flipside, if Spring is a slow time where you’re at, you could experiment with things like lower prices, length-of-stay discounts, reduced minimum nights, etc.
Offer The Best Value
Glamping guests are searching for all types of stays. So whether you’re offering an ultra-lux stay, an ultra-natural stay, or anything in between, it’s important to emphasize all the value you provide for your guests.
You then want to ensure your nightly price matches that whole picture. Offer special activities? Firewood? S’more fixins? Make sure that’s clear to guests — whether you include it in their nightly price or as an add-on.
And also make sure your pricing level factors in that the nightly price you set will be lower than what the guest actually pays due to taxes and fees.
Try Our Pricing Tools
We’ve been in the RV rental biz for a while now and we’ve built some handy pricing tools into that dashboard that carry over to your Stays dashboard. Here are some examples:
–Discounts — You can set rules to discount certain time periods, auto-discounts for longer stays, and create discount codes all from within your dashboard.
Pro tip: Set up a healthy discount (e.g. 20%) for the first three guests that book with you. This is a great way to get some initial traction and reviews for your listing.
–Event pricing — You know how Uber does surge pricing? You can do the same thing if you know a certain time period that’ll be especially high demand in your area. For example, if you’re near a popular music festival, the chances are good you can up your prices when the tunes start strumming.
–Length of stay pricing — Guests often want one-night stays, but costs can add up fast if you have to turn over your Stay every day. Use our length-of-stay pricing tool to create multiple rules where a guest’s nightly rate goes down the more nights they book.
–Minimum nights — This isn’t a pricing tool per se, but it’s still an important widget to have in your workshop. It requires a bit of trial and error, but if you can set a 2+ night minimum for your Stay without impacting booking demand, you’ll likely have a lot more peace and profit in your life than with a chain of one-nighters.
That’s because your expenses usually don’t change much from a one-night stay to a multi-night stay. Your revenues and profits, on the other hand, shoot right up.
Right-pricing your Stay is a process that can take time. The guideposts above will help you build the habits to keep your prices competitive and your margins healthy.
