These guides are written for operators who manage 15 or more vacation rentals and already use a pricing tool. They do not explain what dynamic pricing is. They cover the decisions that cost portfolios money once one person can no longer look at every calendar every day: when to bring in a revenue manager, how pricing tool settings behave across dozens of listings, how minimum stays and booking windows interact, and how to tell a pricing problem from a demand problem.
Each guide is written by people who run pricing for a portfolio of around 200 listings and check every listing against its market each morning. Where we give numbers, we show the formula and the inputs so you can rerun them on your own data.
Start here
- When to hire a revenue manager for your vacation rental portfolio: the listing count, revenue and time signals, plus the break-even math for percentage and flat fees.
- RevPAR index calculator: see whether occupancy or rate is behind a gap before you change anything.
Hiring and outsourcing revenue management
Who should own pricing as a portfolio grows, what an in-house revenue manager costs against an outsourced service, and what to ask before you sign. It is useful if you are moving from “the founder does pricing on Sunday nights” to a defined process.
- When to hire a revenue manager
- What a revenue manager costs: in-house vs outsourced vs software
- Questions to ask a revenue management company before signing (planned)
Pricing tools at portfolio scale
How PriceLabs, Wheelhouse and Beyond settings behave when they are applied across 15, 50 or 200 listings, and where groups and customizations quietly override each other.
- PriceLabs settings that leak revenue in multi-listing accounts (planned)
- Wheelhouse vs PriceLabs
- Airbnb Smart Pricing vs PriceLabs
- Beyond vs PriceLabs
- All pricing tool comparisons
Minimum stays, gaps and length of stay
Why long minimums often protect cleaning costs rather than revenue, how to price orphan nights, and when to lengthen stays for peak periods.
- The case for 2-night minimums (planned)
- Orphan night rules that do not cost you weekends (planned)
Pacing, booking windows and forecasting
Reading pace against last year and the market, and using the booking window to decide when to discount, if at all.
- Booking pace and pickup
- How to read a pacing report for vacation rentals (planned)
- Last-minute discounts: when they help and when they train guests to wait (planned)
Owner reporting
How to explain revenue performance to property owners with market context, so a quiet month does not become a lost contract.
- Owner revenue reports that show market context (planned)
Hotels, motels and serviced apartments
Applying revenue management to small hotels and motels that sell through OTAs and a channel manager rather than a hotel RMS.
Where to start, by portfolio size
- 10 to 20 listings: start with When to hire a revenue manager and the RevPAR index calculator. Most of the decisions at this size are about whether pricing still gets reviewed every week.
- 20 to 75 listings: read the metric pages on booking pace and MPI. At this size the gaps usually sit in the booking window, not in the base price.
- 75 listings and up, or hotels and motels: see what a revenue manager costs and hotel revenue management.
How we write these guides
- Every guide has a named author and a reviewer who runs live pricing.
- Formulas are shown with the inputs, and examples are recalculated before publishing.
- Market figures are only quoted with a source and date. Where we have no reliable figure, we say so.
- Guides are reviewed every 6 months, or sooner when a pricing tool changes a feature, and the review date is shown at the top.
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Suggest a guide
If there’s a pricing decision you keep coming back to, tell us at hello@airyield.co. Several of the planned guides above started as questions from operators.
FAQ
Who are these guides for?
Operators and property managers with roughly 15 or more listings, or smaller operators planning to scale. If you have one or two listings, most of this will be more than you need. Your pricing tool’s own help center is a better start.
Do I need PriceLabs to use them?
No. The concepts apply to any pricing tool. Where we describe settings, we name the tool.
Are you affiliated with PriceLabs, Wheelhouse or Airbnb?
No. We are an independent revenue management service and use these tools on our clients’ behalf.
Can you just do this for us?
Yes. That is the service. Get a free revenue audit.
Related: Metrics · Market reports · Pricing · Free revenue audit