PriceLabs Customizations Tutorial – Beginner to Advanced19 min read
PriceLabs Customizations – Introduction
This is an advanced tutorial where I will be explaining PriceLabs Customizations in detail.
Please check out my PriceLabs youtube playlist if you are new to this tool.
You can also check my PriceLabs review and tutorial.
What is PriceLabs?
PriceLabs is a dynamic pricing tool with a market insight dashboard feature.
The proprietary AI algorithm is used to determine the right pricing for your short-term rentals and update your pricing automatically.
This is the tool I recommend airbnb hosts to use, I actually use it to optimize my airbnb pricing.
While it is not simple, it is superior and it has any customization you could think of.
I want to clarify that the Airbnb smart pricing arena is super competitive with many other dynamic pricing tools such as Wheelhouse, Beyond Pricing and AirDNA.
These tools can also help you generate additional revenue by optimizing your overnight rates – and they give you time back by automating the pricing process.
Some of them may seem a bit difficult but PriceLabs is more competent at customization, listing management and automation, which is very important especially when you have to manage numerous listings.
Their price recommendation capabilities are not very different, and you need to do a lot of experimentation to reach a final decision.
It is worth mentioning that no matter how smart they are, they both need your regular monitoring and customization anyway.
PriceLabs Discount: 30 days off + $10 off for your first bill.
How Does PriceLabs Work?
PriceLabs in comparison with other dynamic pricing tools, is easy to use.
You set your base price, min-max prices, and a few other customization options, then it’ll set your pricing dynamically.
The min-max price-setting comes in handy, it ensures my prices don’t go below certain rates. Some case studies have shown that implementing dynamic pricing can increase revenue by up to 40% if you know what you are doing.
To learn to manage your calendar occupancy and airbnb pricing be sure to check out my youtube playlist of 15 videos related to how to use PriceLabs.
If you are not using dynamic pricing, there is simply too much money left on the table.
As an Airbnb host, using pricelabs customizations should be done when you notice patterns on your calendar.
You first need to have a reason when choosing your pricelabs customizations.
Although the customizations alone pay back the monthly fee, you need to set time aside to learn the intricacies. My PriceLabs customizations tutorial has got what you need to get the most out of your airbnb pricing strategies.
Are you enjoying my blog about PriceLabs Customizations? Leave a comment below for any clarifications and sign up for my newsletter for bonus dynamic pricing tips.
PriceLabs Customizations – General
Last Minute Prices
I like how PriceLabs added by default “a gradual 30% last minute discount over the next 15 days from today”.
It is like they are telling you their algorithm.
When you turn it on, it replaces their current default, there will be no longer a 30% discount, you can use your own discount in the forms below:
- Fixed: You can add a fixed price to your airbnb listings within a certain period of days (ie set my price at $100 for the next 10 days).
- % Flat: You can add a flat discount percentage within a certain period of days, but not below the specified minimum price.
(Apply a flat 50% discount on the recommended rate over the next 10 days). You can also select “Premium” which will raise your prices.
- % Gradual: It is one of the most commonly used functions. As the days get closer, PriceLabs doesn’t seem to do a great job lowering prices enough in many markets, but this is what I recommend most often.
The suggested rate is reduced by a gradual percentage over a specified period, but not below the specified minimum (i.e. applying a gradual 50% discount over the following 10 days).
In the example, the discount would be 50% on day 1, 45% on day 2, 40% on day 3 until it reached 5% on day 10. In the case of five days, the percentage discount would be 50% on day 1, 40% on day 2, etc. Alternatively, you can select “Premium”, which will raise your prices.
To check what a gradual discount looks like on the calendar, you just hover over any day within the chosen period, and you will see the last-minute factor value under the price customizations section.
Orphan Day Prices
An orphan night is defined as a night that cannot be booked due to your minimum nights requirements.
If you have a 2-day minimum stay and there is a 1-day gap in between, then that is your orphan night.
This customization is meant for Airbnb hosts with a 2-night minimum or higher and is to be used in conjunction with the minimum stay customization discussed in one section below.
You have two options with this feature:
- Fixed: Simply input a fixed price you want your orphan nights to be priced at and define an orphan night. For gaps less than or equal to your minimum stay.
You should always check how your inputs are reflected on your calendar, to make sure that your prediction is correct. - Percentage –(premium/discount): Similar to fixed except you enter a percentage increase (increment) or decrease (discount) which works off the recommended price.
So, let’s say you have one night, and someone wants to come, you can charge them a specific amount for that one night. It’s a good advantage that we got PriceLabs to do that since Airbnb doesn’t provide it.
I recommend an increase for orphan nights to avoid guests who are interested in getting a single-night deal for a party.
Additionally, orphan nights can be a month or more into the future and there is no reason to discount that far in advance.
Please note that if an Orphan Day also becomes a last-minute day and discounts are set for both customizations (or both defaults are in effect) the system will use the rule below:
- If both are discounts, then the larger discount is applied (since applying both discounts can result in a very large discount).
- If one is a discount and one is a premium, or if they are both premiums, both are applied.
Day Of Week Pricing Adjustment
This is the only pricing customization I am using on my calendar. You need to put a negative to subtract, otherwise it is a plus.
Remember to always use this customization and any other PriceLabs customizations when you notice a trend in your airbnb calendar.
PriceLabs Customizations – Occupancy-Based Adjustments
Before getting into this section, I want to mention PriceLabs related information that I have produced which will be very helpful with this section about how to manage your Airbnb calendar and occupancy.
Now, Occupancy-Based Adjustments is an advanced tool that lets you tell PriceLabs how to adjust the price based on occupancy.
The upside of that, it gives you a lot of flexibility. The downside is that when this tool is used, you will no longer be using the PriceLabs algorithm.
Occupancy and Average Daily Rate (ADR) go hand in hand to make revenue for us.
Therefore, ADR or price recommendation cannot be done without considering the occupancy rate.
As an Airbnb pricing tool, PriceLabs can calculate the occupancy rate for both single-unit and multi-unit listings.
Furthermore, it has a Portfolio Occupancy Adjustment tool which can be applied to a group of airbnb listings. PriceLabs provides the following different set customizations:
- Default
- Aggressive
- Far-out premium
- Step last-min discount
- Coronavirus
- Custom
- None.
Since each person is unique and different, I recommend choosing the custom option and doing your own.
Don’t forget that you still have to monitor, because one 2-week reservation can throw everything out of whack.
Occupancy-based adjustments need a tutorial in and of itself. If you are really interested in using this customization for your calendar, please check my YouTube video about what you need to know about occupancy based adjustments.
PriceLabs Customizations – Stay Restrictions
PriceLabs is very powerful in managing minimum stays which is an important Airbnb pricing tool, you can specify weekday and weekend minimum stays.
In addition, the tool automatically updates minimum stay for far-out bookings and super far-out bookings.
In the select minimum stay section, you will probably use the “custom” option if you have more than six to seven airbnb listings.
Minimum Stay Settings
- Minimum Stay Profile: You will probably use the “custom” option if you have more than five up to ten airbnb listings.
– Important note: if you change any of these settings, PriceLabs will overwrite any existing settings in your Airbnb account related to minimum nights.
- Default Min Stay Rule:
- None: No minimum night adjustments will be made to your Airbnb account, but you can still work with the remaining three customizations as explained below: Last Minute Bookings, Far Out Bookings, and Orphan Bookings.
- Fixed: You can choose a default minimum stay to be set for weekdays and weekends. You must set a minimum stay in each box and must enter a number greater than zero.
- Booking Value: This is an interesting option, let’s say I charge $500 a night and I put $2000 booking value, that means whatever and however many days you book I want at least $2000 for any reservation, this can be $1000 for two nights, or $500 for four nights.
- None: No minimum night adjustments will be made to your Airbnb account, but you can still work with the remaining three customizations as explained below: Last Minute Bookings, Far Out Bookings, and Orphan Bookings.
- Minimum Stay for Last-Minute Bookings
This one is easy; we just want our minimum nights to be specified on weekdays and weekends for the next few days. I can choose to have two nights minimum on both weekdays and weekend in the next 7 days or so
.
- Minimum Stay for Orphan Bookings:
This is so cool!
The ‘Orphan Day prices’ customization will likely be used in conjunction with “Length of gap”
This allows for a dynamic minimum night requirement depending on the length of the gap.
In the screenshot below, the system makes the minimum night requirement equal to the gap of unbooked days as long as the gap is either one or two nights long.
There is a possibility of 1 and 2 orphan nights between bookings in an Airbnb listing with a 3-night minimum.
- Minimum Stay For Far-Out Bookings:
- This is similar to minimum stay for last-minute bookings, but we are choosing the days further in the future (ie outside 60 days).
Check In – Check Out:
This is available on Airbnb, but I recommend doing it on PriceLabs just like I do.
(If you want check-ins/outs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, when the cleaner is available, we can select that here).
Are you enjoying my blog about the PriceLabs Customizations? Leave a comment below for any clarifications and sign up for my newsletter for bonus dynamic pricing tips.
PriceLabs Customizations – Seasonal and Minimum Prices
This is a price adjustment for the day of the week.
Or apply minimum, maximum, or percentage change of specific dates.
Custom Seasonal Profile:
- Click on Edit Profile.
- Select between Fixed and Percentage. Fixed is when you are doing listing level customizations, and percentage is when you have a group of customizations, and you want to apply a percentage customization to all of them.
- Enter your season settings, (name and season dates).
- You can override your Min, Base, and Max Price, or you can keep the listing-level default prices by leaving it empty. I made a video about How To Adjust Seasonal Minimum and Base Price, and Night Requirement by PriceLabs, make sure to check it out.
- You can set different minimum stay settings for each season by selecting your created Min Stay Profiles
- Once done, just click “Finish Profile” and “Save Changes”
Minimum Weekend Pricing:
I personally have this on because I recently lowered my minimum within Airbnb to $400 instead of $450.
Because I wanted that to be a minimum for the weekdays, and I wanted the weekend to stay at $450, I added the minimum weekend pricing customization, allowing me to have $400 minimum on weekdays (account level minimum) and $450 minimum on weekend.
- Fixed: Self-explanatory. You just enter a fixed pricing.
- % change on base price: Your base price will increase by a certain percentage (you should enter a minus sign for discounts)
Hint: You Will Always Change Your Initial Base Price in PriceLabs
- % change on min price: Your min price will increase by a certain percentage (you should enter a minus sign for discounts). This option would not change your pricing if you have a higher rate.
Minimum Far Out Pricing:
- Fixed: You can specify your weekdays and weekend pricing for days further in the future (ie outside 90 days).
- % change on base price & % change on min price: This is similar to what we learnt earlier.
PriceLabs Customizations – Advanced Customizations
Weekend Days:
You can define what your weekend days are.
This option matters as it affects the minimum nights for weekdays and weekends.
Also any customization that has weekdays and weekends included.
Demand Factor Aggressiveness:
- Recommended: This is the price I already have.
- Conservative: This will fluctuate your price to be lower. Demand factor will be lower.
- Aggressive: This will fluctuate your price to be higher. Demand factor will be higher.
Pricing Offset:
If all the prices are too low, you can put either a fixed or percentage change on the final recommended price, this setting affects the demand factor.
Offsets can be applied even if the listings are not mapped, if the user wants the final price to be higher/lower than the recommended price by a certain percentage/amount for all the dates.
Adjacent Factor:
This setting allows you to change your price before and after a reservation. If a customer has already booked a night, this can be used to offer a discount for an extended stay.
PriceLabs Customizations – Hierarchy Rules
Hierarchy rules are applied when you are simultaneously using account group and listing level customizations.
From highest to lowest priority, the rules are:
- Orphan Day Minimum Stay
- Date Specific Override Minimum Stay
- Adjacent Day (after booking) Minimum Stay
- Adjacent Day (before booking) Minimum Stay
- Far out Minimum Stay
- Last Minute Minimum Stay
- Default Minimum Stay
According to these rules, if the Last minute day is also an Orphan day, then the Orphan day Minimum stay restriction will apply as it has higher priority.
Are you enjoying my blog about the PriceLabs Customizations? Leave a comment below for any clarifications and sign up for my newsletter for bonus dynamic pricing tips.
PriceLabs Customization – Conclusion
PriceLabs’ prices are the main reason why I like them! Among the listings I manage and Airbnb revenue management for, I find their pricing variability to be most accurate.
In my opinion, some of the prices offered by other companies are too flat.
The new features introduced by PriceLabs are fantastic and unique. Here are the two features I like most:
- Lowering minimum nights requirement while raising price for orphan days
- Customizing last minute discounts
There’s a lot of strategy involved in PriceLabs. The learning curve is short, but unlocking its full potential (customizations) will take some time.
Take your time. Sign up, connect your account, and input your minimum and base prices.
Here you can get 30-days off + $10 off for your first bill.
You can Start Here: Demo Of PriceLabs Customizations + Discount In Text
Then, come back to my review and look into one customization per week starting with the ‘Last Minute Prices’ customization.
Bonus Tip: How to connect Airbnb with PriceLabs
After creating a new PriceLabs account, you should follow the steps below:
Download the Chrome extension “PriceLabs – Connect your Airbnb listings”
While you are on your PriceLabs account page, press on the extension in Chrome and login with your Airbnb Account
Note: In order to avoid this error message, you have to make sure that you are logging in to the PriceLabs extension with the same username as Airbnb. Avoid logging in to Airbnb with your phone number.
After connecting your Airbnb account with PriceLabs extension successfully, press on the button that says “ Take me to PriceLabs”.
On PriceLabs page, press on the extension one more, and choose the button that says “Import to PriceLabs”.
If you need further help, PriceLabs offers email only support, but they do respond rapidly. They post their support email in numerous places so you cannot miss it. Email them at support@PriceLabs.co. Don’t forget, you can always reach out to me for any questions.
PriceLabs Dynamic Pricing
$15
Pros
- Best in industry customizations
- Customer support
- Affordable price
- Market dashboards
Cons
- Dashboard requires time to learn the functionality
PriceLabs Dynamic Pricing
$15
Pros
- Best in industry customizations
- Customer support
- Affordable price
- Market dashboards
Cons
- Dashboard requires time to learn the functionality
Blog content is happily and always provided 100% free. On average, I spend 5 hours per article.
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About Danny Rusteen:
Starting in 2012, Danny has been an Airbnb employee, Superhost, and Airbnb property manager. Danny lives in Airbnbs (2,000 nights). As a guest, Danny has traveled to 36 countries and sifted through thousands of Airbnb listings, so he knows what makes a listing stand out and how to offer a world-class experience to your guest. Follow his journey.
