Lack of seasonal pricing - forcing me to consider leaving Airbnb

[Joanna14]

Hi all

Firstly, I'd like to say I'm a fan of Airbnb having participated in Local media interviews singing it's praises. I've loved being a Host for nearly 4 years now, renting 3 individual rooms in my home or the whole house dependent on who books first. I also have another 2 holiday home property Airbnb listings (with a 3rd property being completed soon and hopefully going on Airbnb).

I therefore have a total of 6 listings at the moment with 6 separate calendars and have to say I'm getting close to the point where I'm seriously considering leaving Airbnb as it is proving TOO time consuming to maintain the pricing using the Airbnb standard pricing model.

It is just too basic and does not allow enough flexibility! Whilst other systems (OwnersDirect.co.uk - HomeAway, HolidayLettings.co.uk - TripAdvisor, Booking.com etc) allow the familiar and much used seasonal pricing model allowing the host to name a "Season" and decide on things such as:

1. Which range of dates constitute a particular "Season"
2. The minumum number of nights
3. The prices for a day/week/month for that particular date range
4. Which days constitute a "weekend" (just Friday/Saturday or Friday/Saturday/Sunday etc) for that particular date range
5. The prices for the aforementioned weekend days
6. The per person per night price for additional guests above a certain number

This kind of model makes it SO simple to setup and change prices and means that it is really easy to see what your prices are.

Compare this to the Airbnb model (which is great if you only have 1 or 2 listings) where:

1. You can set a base price
2. You can set a discount for weekly and monthly prices based on your daily rates
3. You can set individual prices for periods - but you need to do this manually for individual date ranges which is VERY time consuming when you are setting/amending prices for a year in advance and then multiply that by the number of listing calendars needing managing.
4. You can set a weekend price - although you can't set which days are classed as weekend days
5. There are "kludges" or workarounds for the lack of "seasonal prices" (if you can find them hidden in the discounts section) but these only allow you to set a weekly or monthly price for specific weeks/months going forward and only allow 12 months in advance. They are restictive i.e. weekly price overide only allows you to do it in blocks of Monday-Sunday. The other noteable Kludge is the one where you can set the minimum number of days for a specific date range, this is about as close as it gets to being anything near a usable seasonal pricing model.

I've chosen deliberately not to go for Smart Pricing as I want to be in control of the prices and from what I've read on the forums Smart Pricing adds its own problems to the melting pot.

I'm not against either of the two Airbnb models: Standard pricing or Smart Pricing. I think they work for some of the many thousands of hosts that Airbnb relies on for its business. I just think that there should be a full implementation of the Seasonal Pricing model to allow hosts the freedom to choose to manage their listings in a controlled and timely manner.

I sometimes think that Airbnb software developments have concentrated too much on the guest experience (a relatively good thing as I'm a frequent guest too) but moreso on features to benefit it's own business profits. Read the conversations on the community forums and you'll see that hosts are clamouring for increased richness of functionality but without any really big changes for a couple of years! In some cases there has even been degradation of functionality (e.g. the lack of ability now to automatically have the guest/host name automatically populated in system stored commonly used messages - at least they are multiplatform now I suppose).

Add to this some other problems which seem to keep occuring where my manually entered prices (or at least some of them) seem to change of their own accord to a previously recorded value...!!! Arghhhh!!!

As I said at the beginning of this missive. I'm getting to the point where if things don't change soon I'm going to seriously consider ditching Airbnb in favour of the competition (Booking.com, HomeAway, TripAdvisor etc) where I don't have to spend hours and hours managing priciing.

What would be really good?

Would be somebody appropriate from Airbnb to respond to this and let us all know what they are going to do about it?

[Helen3]

Hello @Joanna14

Airbnb don't monitor this forum. It is a forum for hosts.

If you want them to consider something put it on Host Voices or contact them directly.

The bottom line is that if BNB doesn't work for you/is too time consuming for you - even using one of the pricing/management software options available on the market to help you manage multiple listings. - You can either employ someone to help you manage your listings or find another listing provider that you have indicated better suits your needs.

[Lilly19]

I'm new to hosting on Airbnb and finding this issue as well. It is SO clunky!!  I tried to contact Airbnb to ask some specific questions, but was directed to a Superhost who was very nice, but didn't really address my main issues. I asked if there would be an admin responding as well and she said no. All a bit too much!

[Karen489]

There was an option to set 3 months in season to a different rate but I did so and it was never applied to bookings

[Nina75]

This is very simple....

1.) Go to Your Listings.
2.) Click on Availability
3.) Trip Length
4.) Add another Requirement
5.) During -> Specific Dates
6.) Select your Seasonal Dates.
(put in your requrements)

Next go to 
Calendar
1.) Place the hand on the date that you want to start your seasonal dates and (Left Click)
2.) Then hold and drag the handle across the dates that you want to change. You can do up to 35 days at a time. 
3.) Then save the Price and then you are done.

[Cari12]

Even if you can change for up to 35 days at a time, it's still just one price and the weekend days still have to be changed individually which is SO time consuming and leaves room for error with so much individual editing being done. 

[Denise33]

This does not help in the case of changing discounts as well or not offering them. I've done this and it's quite cumbersome but yes, it's easy in terms of simplistic.

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[Jeff158]

@Denise33  @Joanna14  @Cari12 use the airbnb professional software, click on the link and scroll down to another small link that say's "use the tools now"

https://www.airbnb.co.uk/host/professional

This next links show how rule sets work.

https://www.airbnb.ie/help/article/2061/how-do-rule-sets-work

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

Well.......if we think about how it all started Airbnb was not really set up to support "professional" hosts with dozens of listings so those who are hosting on a larger scale could feel that things are clunky and time consuming.

For someone like me who has a single private room listing it's not the most efficient and honestly could use a few improvements but simple and fairly easy to use.

[J-Renato0]

@Joanna14

I think you have made great points.

I also think Airbnb price management is very limited.

I also would like to set seasonal price in a more precise way, and also to be able to set up date where only checkin or checkout is available, without any restriction to do it.

I suggest sending this via feedback form as well.