Understanding the Dynamic Pricing Calendar

Understanding the Pricing Calendar

The calendar shows recommended prices for each available night in the future. You might notice that each day has a different price - and this is the magic of dynamic pricing! In general, the prices fluctuate around the base price (either calculated by us, or provided by you) based on the following factors, and you should be able to see those in action:
  1. Season (time of the year, peak vs. lean season)
  2. Day of week (weekends vs weekday depending on the location)
  3. Supply and demand fluctuations due to a holiday or event
  4. How far out a date is (close in dates get a last minute discount)


Now let's dive in to the numbered tags in the image above:      
  1. Minimum, Base, and Maximum Prices: When you first import your listing you'll be able to see the base price calculated by us. Think of the base price as the average nightly rate for the year - we'll then fluctuate your rates around this base price based on season, day-of-week, events/holidays, and how far out a date is. You can change the base price to bring the recommended prices up or down (since our price recommendations fluctuate around the base price). We recommend users to periodically monitor their performance metrics and update base price if needed. You can also set a lowest and highest price that we wouldn't go beyond in our recommendations. For more details in setting this up, you can check our guide here.

  2. Base Price Help: Our recommendation tool that helps you determine the most appropriate base price for your listing base on your own listing's performance and in contrast with the performance of the market. Read more about this here.

  3. Save & Refresh: Once you enter new lowest/base/highest prices, you can hit the "Save & Refresh" button to allow your changes to reflect in your calendar.

  4. Sync Now: Once you have reviewed your prices are satisfied with the price recommendations, you can turn on the Sync Prices toggle so that we can start our daily updates to the listing. If you want the prices to update right away, hit the yellow "Sync Now" button and allow up to 15 minutes for the prices to update on your listing. 

  5. Customizations:  Customizations allow you to select the extent of last minute discounting (to get last minute bookings at a discount instead of nights going un-booked) and orphan day discounts (to get bookings on short gaps between two bookings that are harder to fill), and setup rules to dynamically change your min-night settings, along with adjusting your rates automatically based on listing occupancy, seasonality, day of the week. 

  6. Calendar Indicators: These indicators help you better understand the data displayed on your calendar.
    1. Market Demand - color coding to show the levels of market demand
      1.  Light green - low demand
      2.  Green - normal demand
      3.  Light blue - good demand
      4.  Dark blue - high demand
    2. Unavailable - greyed out dates shows the unavailable dates
    3. Booking Info:
      1.  Check In - dates that have bookings and also a check-in day
      2.  Booked - dates that have bookings
    4.  Unbookable - dates that are not bookable due to min stay or check-in/out restrictions set on PriceLabs
    5.  Min-stay- represents the required length of stay to book a date

      Notes:
    6. You can disable the Booking Info and Unbookable indicators from the Calendar Advanced Settings (see #22)
    7. For multi-unit listings, you'll see a pie chart indicator to signify the occupancy-

  7. Calendar Months: This drop-down allows you to hop on to any month.


  8. Tooltip: When you hover on the rates on the calendar, you can see a popup with the reasons as to why a price was recommended. In general you'll see a demand factor and a supply estimate (in terms of occupancy rate in other vacation rentals), along with how rates are adjusted for seasonality and listing occupancy, and any minimum or maximum pricing settings. For more info on this, check our guide here.

  9. Group/Sub Group Customization: A useful feature if you have multiple properties. You can assign each listing to a group so that you can work on a group of properties in one session. You can read more about creating and managing groups here.

  10. Listing Health:  The first set of metrics show you the listing's occupancy rates over the given time periods, you can read specifics on these metrics and learn how to change the time frame shown here. Just below these metrics is a sync switch for this listing along with the last synced and last refreshed times; a sync is when your rates and min-stays are pushed to your listing, while a refresh is when rates are updated in PriceLabs only (this is useful for seeing how changes in customizations effect your rates before sending them to your listings!).  

  11. Events/Holidays: This cool feature now allows you to see Events, Holidays, and High-demand Dates in your hyperlocal market along with the Average Price set for each date. You can also report any event missing from the list!
    1. This feature is currently only available upon request to support@pricelabs.co
    2. Reported events will undergo a review before getting added to the list

  12. Date Overrides: Know something that we don't? You can click and drag over dates  or click the green "Date Specific Override" button to override our recommended prices and/or min-night restrictions with your own values. From then on we will use this value instead of our recommended prices for those dates. To see a list of all overrides being applied to this listing, including those from the group or account level, click the "Show Date Specific Overrides" link. You can read our full article on setting overrides here. 

  13. Base Price History:  Click here to see a table of the changes to your minimum, base, and maximum rates over the time your listing has been on PriceLabs.

  14. Notes: A handy feature to let you add notes for your listings. This can be enabled on the Calendar Settings (see #22).

  15. Full Calendar Year: Allows you to have a macro view of your calendar. The full year navigation calendar is displayed at the bottom of usual "monthly" pricing calendar. Displaying the full year calendar (screenshot below) can add 3 to 4 seconds when you review prices for a listing, so we recommend keeping it off to speed things up unless you use it frequently. You can also enable this from the Calendar Settings (see #22).

  16. Neighborhood Data:  This neat feature allows you to see how other listings in your area are priced compared to yours, and where they are located, you can access it by clicking the tab next to the calendar tab. You can read our full guide on your listing's Neighborhood Data tab here. Please note that this can take up to a day to appear after you first review prices for a listing. 

  17. Hotel Data: Allows you to view Listing Hotel Data that provides you with valuable insights into the pricing strategies of nearby hotels.

  18. Listing Drop-down: This dropdown allows you to jump to other listing's pricing calendar.

  19. Listing Link: This button () easily brings you to your listing page.

  20. Tags: Examples of tags could be anything you fancy - location ("East London") is a common one, but you can also use it to list the address of the property so they can find it quickly with the search function. If you have set nicknames in some management systems, they will be imported to this field. To manage your tags, check our guide here.

  21. Previous and Next Button: Allows you to view the next and previous listing's pricing calendar. 

  22. Calendar Settings: Lets you enable and disable other features from your Pricing Calendar.

    1. Calendar Settings:
      1. Full year calendar
      2. Enable display notes
    2. Advanced Settings:
      1. Highlight dates with overrides: Use this to display different levels of date specific overrides (Group, Account and Listing level) on the pricing calendar with a black triangle mark on the top right corner of the date box. 

      2. Show Booking Info: Allows you to enable or disable booking info indicators (see #6)
      3. Show Unbookable: Allows you to enable or disable unbookable indicators (see #6)
      4. Download Prices:  Click this link to download a CSV file of the current rates and min-stays for this listing. You can also check our guide here for more details.



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