Using PriceLabs for Midterm Rentals

Using PriceLabs for Midterm Rentals

Wondering how you can set up your midterm rentals in PriceLabs? Whether you want to temporarily convert your listing into a midterm rental during the slow season or your property is now limited by city regulations, here are some ideas you can use.

First, let's start defining what midterm rentals are:
Midterm rentals are rental periods that run anywhere from one month to one year.

Overview Video



Three steps on setting up your midterm rental in PriceLabs

1. Set up your minimum stay requirements

From fewer :


Apart from setting up your default minimum stay rule to 30 nights, you can also increase the minimum stay on Far out bookings to discourage far out reservations that will create a calendar gap, unless they have a certain length in which you're ok to accept them.
In the example below, the minimum stay will be 30-nights between the present day, and the next 30 days. After that, the minimum stay is 90-nights between day 30 and day 60, and 120-nights minimum from day 60 onwards. 




Adjacent days after a booking


Use the minimum stay settings for adjacent days after a booking to encourage back to back reservations.
Let's say you've received a booking of 90 nights. The next available day after the booking will probably have a 60-night minimum stay requirement (based on the above suggestion of minstays for far-out dates). With the rule for adjacent days after a booking, you can automatically set the minimum stay after the booking to 30-night for the next 'X' amount of days.  



Flex Midterm strategy

If you're allowed to do short-term rentals, but you'd like to mainly focus on midterm rentals, you can set a short minimum stay for close-in dates, while focusing on MTR after a certain period. In the example below, we are setting a minimum stay of 3 nights from the present day to the next 14 days. From day 14 to 21, a 7-nights minimum. From day 21 onwards a 30-night minimum, and from day 45 onwards a 60 night-minimum.



Minstay settings for filling orphan gaps

Let's say that two reservations created an orphan gap between them of 24 nights. If you're allowed to take a shorter reservation in that period, you can use the minimum stay for orphan gaps to fill the gap. In the example below, the setting allows a 7-night reservation in gaps between 7 and 29 nights.

2. Set up your minimum, base, and maximum prices.

  1. Think of your monthly minimum and divide it by 30 days. Use that value as your minimum price.
  2. Think of your monthly maximum price and divide it by 30 days. Use the result as your maximum price.
  3. Set up your base price between the minimum and maximum price.


Seasonal prices
- If you'd like, you can set up seasonal minimum base and maximum prices. Learn more about Setting seasonal prices with PriceLabs.

3. Pricing Strategy

The midterm rental market is less complex than the short-term rental, so there are fewer variables to focus in. In general, revenue managers of MTR apply a pricing strategy based just on the booking window, while disabling some of the default customizations and market factors.

Market Factors: Seasonality and Demand

  1. Demand Factor: Switch it OFF

  1. Seasonality factor: In most cases, we recommend setting it to 'Conservative'. However, in other cases, we recommend switching it OFF as well, specially if you're using a Custom Seasonal Profile. 


Lead Time:


A) Last Minute & Far out prices
  1. Use the Last Minute Prices customization to increase the chances of getting bookings in close-in dates. 
  1. Disable Far-out premium: By default, our algorithm has a 'Far-Out Premium' feature, increasing rates for dates as they get farther out. If your longer bookings tend to be made well in advance of check-in, disable this feature so that your monthly rates are within the desirable range for your market. 
B)  Occupancy based adjustments

  1. Occupancy based adjustments can also be used to apply discounts and premiums based on the lead time. While these percentage adjustments will be fixed and not gradual, you can apply them based on the occupancy levels on different date ranges. In the example below, we are applying discount in the last minute period (last 15 days), not applying changes on the normal booking window (between 15 and 90 days out), and applying premiums from day 91 from today.


Other customizations

  1. Adjacent Factor: You can discount the adjacent days to a booking to increase the possibility of having back-to-back reservations and help to ensure higher occupancy rates by encouraging back-to-back reservations.


  1. Orphan Day Prices: If you're allowed to take shorter reservations between midterm bookings, you could apply a discount for gaps longer than the 2-night default. Otherwise, switch it OFF.

Market data

Using the Neighborhood Data to compare against other midterm rentals

In the listing's Neighborhood Data, you can compare your future prices and occupancy vs. competitors in your same area. By default, we show the data of the nearest 350 listings. But, to make it more relevant for your use case, you can now compare with a custom comp-set from the Market Dashboards as the data source instead of the default nearby listings. That allows you to compare with other midterm rentals in your market!

First, note that the Market Dashboards are reports you can create on any market worldwide. The dashboards will show all the booking data in easy-to-digest charts, from the main KPIs (revenue, occupancy, average price, etc.), cancellation policies, and much more! Find out how to create a Market Dashboard here.

Once you explore the dashboard, you can filter the listings and create a comp-set with those more relevant to you. Check out this video to learn how to create comp-sets in the Market Dashboards.

In the chart below, listings are being filtered by their minimum stay and bedroom count to create a comp set for a three-bedroom unit that requires a stay of 28 days or longer. 


After creating the comp-set, you can select it as the data source in the Neighborhood Data feature, easily compare your future prices and availability, check the listings on the map, and even compare daily rates for the next year.



Create a Market Dashboard to get insights on your midterm rental market.

Create a dashboard for your location, filter the comp-set table by Minimum stay (default minimum stay for each listing), and create your own midterm rentals comp-set. Learn more on how to create a dashboard, and how to create a comp-set.

It will be interesting to track metrics to better understand your market's behavior:
  1. Length of stay vs Booking window chart: This is super useful to see how many confirmed bookings there are for each future date based on the length of the stay and what the average prices look like for each type of booking.
You can move the bar at the bottom to check these metrics for the past 15 months!

  1. Lead time/ booking window is the number of days in advance bookings are made.
  2. Length of stay is the duration of the reservation.
  1. See pricing and occupancy metrics, cancellation policies, and much more!  


We hope these ideas are helpful. For any questions or feedback, please reach out to us at support@pricelabs.co.

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