Using PriceLabs for Midterm Rentals

Using PriceLabs for Midterm Rentals

Whether you’re temporarily converting your property into a midterm rental during the slow season or adapting to city regulations, here’s how you can effectively set up your midterm rentals in PriceLabs.



What Are Midterm Rentals?

Midterm rentals are stays that range from one month to one year, offering an alternative to short-term rentals while catering to longer-term tenants.

Three Steps to Set Up Midterm Rentals in PriceLabs

Info
We are currently gradually rolling out an update on the Dynamic Pricing view so you may either see the current or the updated view. If you are still seeing the current view, it will be updated in the coming days.

1. Set up a flat minimum stay requirement of 30-nights


For orphan gaps:

  1. If your calendar has gaps shorter than 30 nights (e.g., 24 nights), you can use minimum stay rules for these gaps. This allows shorter reservations (e.g., 7 nights) in periods between 7 and 29 nights.

  1. To prevent gaps, use the minimum stay settings for adjacent days to limit or avoid creating calendar gaps. Learn more here. 

    Here's an example scenario:     Let’s say your minimum booking length is set to 31 days, and you currently have no reservations on your calendar. You want to avoid a situation where someone books a 31-day stay far in advance, leaving a 30-day orphan gap in your calendar that could prevent future bookings. Here’s how you can prevent that from happening using PriceLabs' "Adjacent Day Minimum Stay Settings":

    Solution: To prevent such a situation, you can use the "Adjacent Day Minimum Stay Settings." Here’s how it works:

    • Set your default minimum stay to 31 nights.
    • For dates within 25 nights of an unavailable night, set the minimum stay to 31 nights.
    • For dates within 31 nights of an unavailable night, set the minimum stay to 60 nights (or even more if you wish).

    What this means:

    • If someone tries to book and leave a gap between 25-30 nights, they will be forced to book for at least 60 nights. This ensures that a 30-day orphan gap doesn’t form.
    • However, if someone books a stay starting before the 25th night or after the 31st night, they can still book a 31-night stay as normal.

    How to Use It: This strategy is helpful when you want to prevent gaps from being left open by people trying to book just long enough to create an orphan gap. By setting a larger minimum stay requirement for adjacent dates, you ensure that smaller gaps are closed off by longer bookings. 

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

  1. Minimum Price: Divide your monthly minimum income by 30 days to set the daily minimum.
  2. Maximum Price: Divide your monthly maximum income by 30 days to set the daily maximum.
  3. Base Price: Choose a value between your minimum and maximum prices.


3. Set up monthly discounts.

  1. Some PMS/Channels allow you to configure monthly discounts directly in PriceLabs (available in the General tab under customizations).
  2. If this option isn’t available, you’ll need to set up the discounts in your PMS or directly in platforms like Airbnb/VRBO.
  3. When offering monthly discounts, calculate the impact on your final income and adjust your minimum, base, and maximum prices accordingly.


Using Neighborhood Data for Comparisons

Neighborhood Data allows you to compare your listing’s performance (prices and occupancy) against competitors in your area.
  1. Default comparison: Data from the nearest 350 listings.
  2. Custom comp-sets: Use Market Dashboards to filter and create a comp-set tailored to midterm rentals.

Market Dashboards are customizable reports that can be created for any market worldwide. These dashboards present booking data in easy-to-understand charts, including key performance indicators (KPIs) like revenue, occupancy, average price, cancellation policies, and more. Learn how to create a Market Dashboard here.

After exploring the dashboard, you can filter listings to create a comp-set tailored to your specific needs. Watch this video to learn how to create comp-sets in the Market Dashboards. See the comp-set sample below:
  1. In this chart, listings are filtered by minimum stay and bedroom count to create a comp-set specifically for three-bedroom units requiring a minimum stay of 28 days or more.


Once the comp-set is created, you can use it as the data source in the Neighborhood Data feature. This allows you to easily compare your future prices and availability, view listings on the map, and analyze daily rates for the upcoming year.

Advanced Customizations for Midterm Rentals

Market Factors: Seasonality and Demand

Allow prices to fluctuate within your set minimum and maximum range based on seasonality and demand factors. However, if you're an advanced user with in-depth market knowledge, you can fine-tune these factors for greater control. Learn more about Setting seasonal prices with PriceLabs.
  1. If you’re configuring seasonal minimum, base, and maximum prices, consider turning off the PriceLabs seasonality factor for more precise control. To enable this option for your account, contact us at support@pricelabs.co.


  1. Adjust the Demand Factor Sensitivity in your 'All Customizations' settings to increase or decrease price fluctuations based on market demand.


Orphan Day Prices and Occupancy-Based Adjustments

Consider your Orphan Day Prices and Occupancy-Based Adjustments settings. If shorter reservations are permitted between midterm bookings, you can:
  1. Apply a discount for gaps longer than the default 2-night setting.
  2. Adjust the day ranges in the Occupancy-Based Adjustments matrix to accommodate longer stays.

If you prefer not to accept reservations shorter than 28/30 days, you can disable both features entirely.

Last Minute Prices

Utilize the Last Minute Prices customization to boost the likelihood of securing bookings for close-in dates. If your booking window permits, consider extending the last-minute discount period to ‘within the last 30 days’ instead of the default ‘last 15 days.’

Disable Far-out premium

By default, our algorithm includes a 'Far-Out Premium' feature that increases rates for dates farther into the future. If your longer bookings are typically made well in advance of check-in, consider disabling this feature to keep your monthly rates within the optimal range for your market. Learn more about this here. 


Adjacent Factor

You can apply discounts to the days adjacent to a booking to encourage back-to-back reservations, increasing the likelihood of higher occupancy rates and minimizing gaps in your calendar.

Tracking Market Metrics with Market Dashboards

Tracking metrics can provide valuable insights to better understand your market's behavior. Create a dashboard for your location and filter the comp-set table by Minimum Stay (the default minimum stay for each listing). Use this filtered data to build your custom midterm rentals comp-set. Learn more on how to create a dashboard, and how to create a comp-set.

Length of stay vs Booking window chart

This is incredibly useful for analyzing the number of confirmed bookings for each future date, based on the length of stay, and understanding the average prices for different types of bookings. 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.

See pricing and occupancy metrics, cancellation policies, and much more!  


We hope you find these ideas helpful! If you have any questions or feedback, please reach out to us at support@pricelabs.co.

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