One of the most important things to automate in your short-term rental business is your Airbnb pricing. Maybe you’ve already decided you want to automate your pricing, but now you need to decide which one is going to be best for your business model. Which one will best improve your top line?
This article compares Pricelabs vs. Beyond Pricing, their features, and which would suit different kinds of Airbnb hosts. So let’s take a look.
Why should Airbnb hosts use an automated pricing tool?
Pricing the most complicated, meticulous and annoying part of Airbnb hosting.
Airlines and hotels have entire departments with mathematicians and data analysts to calculate the prices they charge.
As an Airbnb host, should resist the temptation to post the same price every day of the year. You a) will lose out on potential higher nightly rates or on full occupancy and b) don’t need to be spending hours calculating this data every day.
Prices fluctuate, and if your Airbnb pricing strategy isn’t adaptable and dynamic, you’ll leave money on the table.
PLUS, if you have multiple listings and want to stay competitive, you need to update your prices daily. Do you have the time to do that? If you do, do you WANT to spend your time doing that when you don’t need to?
Pricelabs and Beyond Pricing are both excellent pricing tools, each with a different approach to pricing.
What aspects should you look for in an Airbnb pricing tool?
A good Airbnb pricing tool should leverage the numerous data points that change every day:
- Seasonality
- Day of the week
- Special events (and the ones you’ve never heard of)
- Hotel prices and availability
- Vacation rental prices
- Flight demand
- Amenities and listing quality
- Number and quality of your reviews
- Time left to book
- Other vacation rentals being added to the marketplace
- Competitor occupancy
- How far away is the booking date
- Competitor prices
- Booking.com
- VRBO
- Trip Advisor
They use sophisticated algorithms to calculate prices based on these and more factors. And it doesn’t only set and forget for the next 365 days. They get updated every 24 hours (also keeping your listings fresh) so that you always have the best price.
This means that your calendar is always updated, which helps rank your Airbnb listing higher in the search results. The reason is that Airbnb wants to avoid “unavailable date” booking rejections. These create a really bad customer experience, so “updated calendar” is one of the Airbnb ranking factors that Airbnb’s search algorithm looks at.
So let’s see how Pricelabs and Beyond Pricing perform against one another.
Pricelabs vs. Beyond Pricing:
What’s the same:
- Calendar management
- Data synchronization
- Price management
- Revenue management
What’s different:
- Customizable reporting
- Data mapping
- Discount management
- Filtered views
- Performance reports
- Synchronous editing
- Third party integration
- Starting at $19.99/month
- Reportedly better support
What’s the same:
- Calendar management
- Data synchronization
- Price management
- Revenue management
What’s different:
- Automatic notifications
- Credit card processing
- Demand forecasting
- Event tracking
- Multi-currency
- Predictive analysis
- Retention management
- Room booking
What makes Pricelabs special?
Pricelabs is dearly loved by all of its users. Maybe it’s for the $20 starting flat fee, or maybe it’s for its outstanding customer support. In any case, it’s a great tool to use for automated Airbnb pricing.
It’s agile, professional, and super easy to use. You can integrate it with all of your channels — Airbnb, VRBO, Homeaway and more. One thing I like about it is that there are lots of customization options.
You can manage last-minute discounts, orphan day discounts (when there’s just a one day gap between two bookings), or set different pricings depending on your neighborhood’s trends.
You can even automate a workflow for discounts and premiums to be automatically triggered based on your occupancy.
Pricelabs uses a few different factors or setting and suggesting prices for your listing. It looks both in the future and in the past — it checks data rom future bookings at other listings to determine event trends, and looks at the last 4 years of base prices and trends to recommend base prices.
They also have dynamic minimum stays, meaning you can choose different kinds of minimum stays depending on the context.
Most people who try Pricelabs really like it. Try it! You can get a 30-day trial and then use the code GPFYP for $10 off (that’s half the price!).
What makes Beyond Pricing special?
What really makes Beyond Pricing special is that it uses real-time market supply and demand data to set your prices. They use technology at the same level of sophistication as the largest hotels and airlines use. They’re available in thousands of cities and in multiple currencies.
It sets a health score for your listing. And don’t be fooled — optimal health doesn’t mean you’re always fully booked. In fact, 100% occupancy can hurt your health score. Why?
Because, unlike the Airbnb smart pricing, Beyond Pricing cares more about your profit than getting full occupancy. It optimizes for highest revenue. According to Beyond Pricing itself:
“Your Health Score is designed to be a feedback loop of how well your Base Price is doing where it is currently set. It is essentially a measure of your booking pace and helps you determine whether your listing is booking up too quickly, too slowly, or just right.
As a general rule, if your Health Score is under 60, we need to make some changes. If it is between 60-80, there is room for improvement, but no need to panic. If your Health Score is between 80-100, you are performing well and do not need to make any changes.”
Beyond Pricing doesn’t have a set base price itself. Instead, it charges 1% of your total revenue. This works well for a lot of Airbnb hosts.
With the Beyond Pricing promo code GP4YP you can get $60 in credits! It’s definitely worth a try.
Read my detailed review of Beyond Pricing here.
Pricelabs vs. Beyond Pricing: Which Airbnb pricing tool is right for you?
It depends what you need and what kind of host you are. Pricelabs has better pricing and outstanding customer service, while Beyond Pricing has more sophisticated technology.
Want to compare more pricing tools?
Read my updated comparison report on all of the Airbnb pricing tools here!
READ THE REPORT