PriceLabs - Occupancy Based Adjustments

Occupancy Based Adjustments

Occupancy Based Adjustment is a customization that enables our system to analyze the horizontal occupancy of your listing and make appropriate rate adjustments. This innovative approach allows us to consider not only market conditions but also your property's performance when providing pricing recommendations.

Here are the common scenarios where it's helpful:

  1. You frequently change your base price to adjust it according to certain occupancy metrics – for example, your listing might have been doing fine so far but, for some reason, is not getting as booked during a certain period. Either something changed in your market, or your listing changed in some way (OTAs ranking it lower than usual, got a bad review, etc.)
  2. You have two similar listings next to each other with the same base price, but for some reason, one is getting booked while the other isn’t (maybe a bad review, search rank, or some other reason). This is especially important if you are a property manager with listings from different owners and would like a more equitable distribution of bookings across the portfolio.
  3. You’re adding a new listing with no bookings so far and want to lower the price for the next few days until the listing gets some bookings and an established customer base, and then bring it back to normal once the listing has enough bookings.
No matter your unique situation, savvy PriceLabs users want more control over how their prices look last minute and far out. And the occupancy-based adjustment customization is a perfect solution to achieve just that! It allows you to set certain price adjustments based on the occupancy rates of a listing within different time windows.




In our Default profile shown on the screenshot above, consider a listing that has just 3 days booked out of the next 15 days, and the remaining 12 nights are still open. The occupancy rate will be calculated as 20% (3/15 * 100%), resulting in the remaining available days getting a 15% discount. If a 3-night booking comes up over the next weekend, the next time we update prices, we'll see the occupancy rate has changed to 40% , and the discount will now be changed to 5% (the discount will be lowered since now you're more occupied).

Sound useful? Read on to see how to set this up!

  1. From the Review Prices page, click "Edit" on the Customizations panel
  2. Under the General tab, enable the toggle for Occupancy Based Adjustments
    Note: If the toggle is off, the Default profile is applied
  3. Once the switch is on, then you will be prompted with several different profiles to choose from, as shown below:

    1. Default: these are our default settings (as seen in the screenshot above). Choose this option if you want to change our default settings or use it as it is.
    2. Aggressive: these are more aggressive than our default settings i.e. higher discounts and premiums in the default day ranges (goes till 30%) -  many of our customers have beta tested this & have seen good results! 
    3. Step-Last Min Discount: use these if you want to set up a step-wise last-minute discount instead of some of our regular last min discount options
    4. Far-Out Premium: given how customizable these tables are, you can even use these to set up far-out premiums to increase prices for dates beyond a certain window! 
    5. Super Aggressive discounting: we've developed a new setting that is more aggressive than our aggressive setting. This profile applies much higher discounts and can be used in places with very low market occupancy. 
    6. Custom: Any of the above can be tailored into a custom option, and this is the option you'll see selected if you edit and save one of the other templates.
    7. Tips to note:
      1. Want to add a far-out premium to one of the other profiles? Use the "Add Column" feature to tack additional date ranges!
      2. Each day range must be smaller than the preceding day range (0 < 15, 16 < 30, and so on)
      3. Each occupancy-based percentage in the left-hand column must be smaller than all preceding occupancy-based percentages
      4. All percentages in the table must be within the range of -50 % to 500 %. These percentages, as mentioned above, will be applied on top of our pricing calculations.
  4. Apply your preferred settings, then click "Finish Profile" and "Save Changes"


Turning off the Occupancy Based Adjustments

Need a tight control on prices and don't want this automation? You can select the "No occupancy based adjustment" option from the drop-down when you don't want discounts & premiums applied PriceLabs algorithm, even by default. 




Notes:
  1. The occupancy is calculated at a listing level in a given time frame. We're not talking about your portfolio's occupancy levels on a certain date. 
  2. These adjustments are applied on top of our price calculations (which include seasonality, day of the week, event/holiday, and last-minute/far-out factors) and your adjustments (last-minute discounts, orphan day discounts, date-specific adjustments, etc.).
  3. Even after these adjustments are applied, the prices will not go below the minimum or above the maximum price you've set.
  4. If you put in a fixed price override at the listing level (or a "% of base-price" override at the group/account level), then those prices are final, and none of our calculations are used.
  5. All the numbers in the table are adjustable - you can provide the day ranges or the % adjustments based on your occupancy targets
  6. Blocked dates are currently considered booked to calculate occupancy rates except for the following PMS/Channel Managers (where the calculations are only applied to actual booked nights):
    365Villas, Avantio, Beds24, BookingSync, Brightside, Direct, Elina PMS, Eviivo, FantasticStay, Guesty, Hospitable, Hostfully, Hostify, Hostaway, iGMS, Kigo, Lodgix, Lodgify, KrossBooking, LMPM, MyVR, Octorate, OwnerRez, Rentals United, Rentlio, ResHarmonics, Smoobu, Stays, Streamline, SuperControl, Track, Uplisting, VRBO, VReasy

Video Tutorial


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