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Was curious if any other hosts out there have used either Everbooked (EB) or Beyond Pricing (BP) and what their thoughts are? My experience and thoughts below. I welcome ANY and ALL thoughts/comments/criticisms
We have been using EB since Jan for our 2 US properties, our main residence in SF and our vacation house in Wine country. I note the cities bc the occupancy rate is naturally higher than other places because of tourist season pretty much being all the time except for January. We have gotten consistent weekend bookings at a much higher price than I was expecting, so that good. However, the EB weekday price is SO HIGH, to the point Iām spending time every few days going through and manually lowering the weekday prices. We are also not converting weekday stays or close in booking stays. Also, we have every weekend booked until August, which signals to me that although I think the weekend pricing is already āhigh enoughā that I could possibly be charging more. Other pros of EB are the reports, omg for a nerd like me they are magical. I can spend hours pouring over their reports, occupancy rates, ave price per bedroom, ave home type, etc. They also have a cool feature that shows what other Airs by you are booked or not booked on a specific day. Their reporting also extends to almost every US city, so you can look for a potential next Air property and see if it would be profitable. Price is $20/month plus 1% commision.
Since EB does not operate outside of the US we have been using BP (also since Jan) for our Barcelona flat. BP does not have the analytics that EB does, but they do show you a home āhealth scoreā, which is a formula involving your 30 day occupancy rate and your 90 day occupancy rate. Its based on a 100 scale and tells you where you should be in each category, etc. I really enjoy this, and you can link all your Air properties regardless if you are using BP for that particular property. YR/YR with Barcelona when are charging a higher nightly ave since using BP, so I am happy. I also think their weekday pricing is more realistic of what the market is willing to pay for a Mon-Thurs stay. We have had ample weekday conversions and close in conversions in Barcelona. ( BCN is a big weekend destination for other Euros, so weekdays are pretty hard to fill except in peak summer season). Price 1% commision.
I just switched over all our properties to BP to see if we can get some more weekday and close in bookings, as I think their ānon peakā pricing is more realistic. I will report back on my findings. Regardless, I would highly recommend dynamic pricing outside of Air Tips as even though we thought we were charging a very high price(500+ in peak season), both platforms increased our price 30%+, and we converted reservations at the new higher price.
***If anyone wants to try either I would be more than happy to send you a referral, I believe they both offer a trail month for free, which is nice ***
I did the little ātry itā run on EB and their prices were the same that Iād come up with. We are booked through the summer which some say means my prices are to low but I do have my reasons (rooms are in the basement, they have to listen to our foot steps, rooms are not completely finished because our contractor split, etc). If we continue with airbnb in the fall I will use one of those services so I donāt have to think about it anymore. Iāll be interested to hear what you have come up with.
@dcmooney I agree that the hosts knows their space the best, and the pricing algorithms do not take that into account. So far we have been happy, but I do feel we can optimize, hence this post and the switch. We have definitely noticed higher value bookings in Barcelona than previous years, which is great as I would rather have less reservations and more $$$
The jury is still out on SF, bc we took out listing off for 6 months we are now ranked VERY poorly on the the Air search results, to the point our house is shown after houses not even in SF proper. Its very frustrating, how Air punishes hosts for things.
@dcmooney Where did you post go?? I saw it in my email and it has disappeared.
With both Everbooked and Beyond Pricing you have to set your own āBase Priceā and then you āMin priceā. They will automatically put a price into these fields based, i believe, on your Air BNB average. You have to play around with it the first time to make sure that prices arenāt too high or too low. It probably takes about 30mins to play around with the first time.
I would set your āBase Priceā around $95ish and your low price at $80ish and see what the software generates. LIke I said you can always raise/lower the prices.
Ha - sorry - I had a little rant because Everbooked was giving me the same prices that I am already charging. Everyone on this forum tells me they are to low - and other spaces similar to mine - but not as nice in many ways (no breakfast, rooms kind of bleak looking) are getting $25-$50 more per night. I was hoping Everbooked would be a bit more sophisticated. The problem is I have an almost-private suite with two bedrooms, full private bath, kitchenette and eating space. But because itās not an entire home (they use our front door) I can only list it as having 1 bedroom. So itās an entirely frustrating situation for me. Also the guests sleep on the lower level, and I have hard wood floors. I feel that that hurts my value a lot - but no guests have ever complained of noise. I have thought about listing it as āentire homeā but that just feels dishonest. And when I did that I did have a family of 5 show up and the daughter - the only one that spoke English - said āAnd where do you liveā Ha ha, I live RIGHT HERE WITH YOU!! Worked out great but I didnāt like how it felt. So I switched it back to āprivate roomā. But I know LOTS of listings in my area say āentire apartmentā and they are no more than rooms in the basement like mine. I can make it a separate apartment after spending, maybeā¦$5000? but we love the interaction with the guests, soā¦
I guess thatās the tough thing of being an airbnb host in oneās home - how can we compare ourselves? Itās not like Holiday Inn vs Days Inn vs Hilton.
I deleted the original rant to spare you. ; )
I didnāt realize - I must not have read carefully - that when I set a password for Everbooked it changed my password on my airbnb account. Also, I could not find a place to disconnect the listing.
I liked the Beyond Pricing site much better. Their prices are more varied which tells me they are considering more variables than Everbooked, and, I like the little tips. They rated my unhealthy because I am 90% bookedā¦yeah, like I said, my prices are to low. However, their suggested price wasnāt much higher than Everbooked so at this point no one can help me. I couldnāt see anywhere that tells me how much the service is.
So I raised my own prices so a family of 5 pays, I think $120 a night instead of $109. I just find the pricing to be emotional and scary so I wish I had a pro would could really help me.
Right now I have a lovely family of 4 staying with us. They booked last November just before I increased my prices to what they were over the winter - I would be embarrassed to tell you what they are payingā¦
I signed up for the free trial on Beyond Pricing. My listing is in the suburbs of Paris and targets families who visit Disneyland Paris (about 3km away).
My health score is 94
I wonder what data they use and how wide is the geographic area they use as a comparison.
Their prices are very low for some dates which are the peak season for my area (the week before Halloween and the last two weeks of December), low for August which is also high season, and very high for January and February which are the low season.
My impression is that they use the booking data of hotels in the whole Paris region (which get less business customers in August or between Christmas and New Years Eve, but are busy in January and February with the fashion weeks and all kind of professional fairs).
In my case their pricing calendar seems irrelevant.
I also noticed that in January and February my prices soar on the Beyond Pricing calendar - which is crazy for sure, except for around in the inauguration. Of course itās April-August that we are packed.
I guess Iām not the only one feeling like I have to just do it myself.
@dcmooney There is def a glitch for Jan/Feb and beyond. I sent them an email
Beyond Pricing is the same, that you have to set a base price and your lowest price. Once you set these pricing the software works its magic. You have to play with it, and then the watch the āhealth scoreā and if you fall into unfavorable territory adjust accordingly. The āprosā will absolutely help you, but you have to monitor it, I usually check once a week. Mind you the price you set in BP is the base price before extra person fees, etc.
I have had much success with Beyond Pricing, but you do have to commit a little time to it at first. Let me know if you have any questions!
Thought Iād jump in here just to clarify the high prices in Jan/Feb. We really do need to label it better, but what we do is increase prices significantly more than 9 months out because the data shows that people booking that far in advance are much less price sensitive. As you get within 9 months of those days, youāll see the prices normalize. Hotels do something very similar because of whatās been shown to be relative price inelasticity of people booking that far in advance. Hope that helps and weāre working on some better labeling to make it more clear!
@dordal Well Welcome!! You and I have spoken via email a few times, and you have always been very helpful! I hope to switch back to EverBooked once you get the weekday pricing issues fixed. As I have been a big fan of all the extras you guys offer customers, by way of reports and market trend data
@dordal Just so you know we are running into the same issues with Beyond Pricing regarding weekday pricing, however, their pricing is more in line with the market than yours had been. I am still having to manually adjust for any weekdays that are not booked less than 2 weeks out.
I know a lot of people on here are interested on how dynamic pricing can help grow their Air business, hopefully, you can provide some answers. I know @dcmooney tried it and was not thrilled, maybe you could post something in the tools section about best practices for Ever Booked. Or a dummies guide to starting with dynamic pricingā¦etc. As long as it is helpful and not spammy, you wonāt get too many negative comments.
@dcmooney I know you had some issues with Everbooked, I have personally worked with @dordal outside of Air Forum, and I know he would answer any questions or address any issues you have!
