Using VRBO data for your dynamic pricing!

Using VRBO data for your dynamic pricing!

After 2 years of tracking VRBO booking trends, we're finally ready to put them to work. You can now opt in to have VRBO data drive your dynamic pricing recommendations if you are in a VRBO heavy market. We did want to add a few findings from out testing:

We default to using Airbnb data, and have found that switching to VRBO data does not materially change your price recommendations in a VRBO heavy market. This happens for a few reasons:
  1. Many properties cross-list on both platforms.
  2. The way we collect market data is by scanning listing calendars on Airbnb or VRBO and inferring if unavailable dates are bookings or not. As a result, it doesn't matter where a booking comes from (either Airbnb, VRBO, another OTA, or a direct booking!). When a booking is made, we see the dates disappear from the calendars, and then run our algorithms to filter out potential owner/maintenance blocks. If it looks like a booking, regardless of where it comes from, we consider it a booking!
  3. Our algorithm looks at broader booking/occupancy trends in the market, and applies those trends on top of your base price (How Are the Price Recommendations Calculated?). Though there are properties in each market which list only on VRBO or Airbnb, the broader booking trends stay similar when a vast majority is listing on both OTAs.
Hang on - if the price recommendations don't change, should you bother switching to VRBO data? Here are some helpful tips:
  1. Switching to VRBO might make sense if you are in a market that's heavily dominated by VRBO (the image below shows some such markets - you can reach out to our team to inquire about your specific location!)
    VRBO Heavy Markets
  2. Although the price recommendations might not change much, you might want to look at the comps in Neighborhood Data and compare prices against the market using VRBO data. 

Alright - if you want to make the switch, how do you switch over to using VRBO data then?

The feature is only available on request, so please reach out to our support team at support@pricelabs.co to enable this!  You can email our support team, or simply click on this link: Request VRBO data. Our team can also help evaluate if switching to VRBO would be the right choice for your market. 

Once enabled, this feature  is available under  "Advanced Customizations" as seen in the below screenshot.


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