What a revenue manager does for a short-term rental portfolio
Revenue management is deciding what each night should cost, and under which conditions it can be booked, so that each listing earns as much as possible over the year. For a short-term rental portfolio that means four jobs:
- Setting the right base price for each property, from real comparables, and reviewing it each quarter.
- Shaping the calendar: minimum stays, gap-night rules, booking windows and event overrides.
- Managing the discount curve so you are not giving away margin in the last week, or charging too much too far out.
- Measuring results against the market, not against last month, because last month’s market was different.
Most operators with 15 or more listings know this matters. The problem is time. Doing it properly across many listings and several markets is a daily job.
Our method: three layers, every day
Layer 1: PriceLabs sets the starting price
PriceLabs reprices your listings as demand changes. We set it up properly and keep it tuned. PriceLabs is our default; we also work in Beyond, Wheelhouse, AirDNA (Adapt), DPGO, RoomPriceGenie, Rented (ART) and Pace (FLYR Hospitality). These are the inputs we manage, and how we usually approach them compared with a set-and-forget setup:
| Setting | How we manage it | Common set-and-forget setup |
|---|---|---|
| Base price | Set per property from comparables, reviewed quarterly | Tool suggestion accepted once |
| Minimum stay | Usually 2 nights, lifted for peak weeks | Fixed 3 to 5 nights all year |
| Discount curve | Gradual, starting about 60 days out, no last-week cliff | Flat, then 10% to 30% off inside 7 days |
| Orphan-gap fill | 1-night stays for orphan gaps only, never Friday or Saturday | Off, or on everywhere |
| Price floor | Set per property at a level you agree | Often unset |
| Channel discounts | Considered in the base rate so the discount is not a loss | Off, or on at full cost |
| Occupancy adjustment | On, capped and checked daily | On, uncapped and unchecked |
These are starting positions, not fixed rules. Every market and property type is different, and we explain any change we make.
Layer 2: our software checks every listing every morning
Each morning our system pulls the previous day’s bookings, the market data and the next 90 days of each calendar, then scores each listing on:
- RevPAR index: revenue per available night compared with the market. Above 1.00 means the listing out-earns its market.
- ADR index: your average nightly rate compared with comparable listings.
- Market penetration index (MPI): your occupancy divided by market occupancy. 1.18 means 18% more nights booked than the market.
- Booking pace: nights booked in the last 14 days against what the market suggests the listing should have picked up.
- Booking window: MPI and occupancy for the next 14 days, next 30 days, days 31 to 60 and days 61 to 90.
Then it checks whether the numbers can be trusted. One long reservation can make occupancy look healthy. An owner block can make it look weak. A small number of nights with a verified rate makes the ADR index unreliable. Each listing gets a confidence score, and low-confidence listings are reviewed by a person with no automatic change.
Layer 3: a revenue manager approves every change
Our software runs in approval mode. It recommends changes; it never pushes prices on its own. A revenue manager approves or holds each flagged change before it goes live and records the reason. On a typical morning for a large portfolio, that is a short, focused review of the listings that need attention.
Why we target RevPAR, not occupancy or rate alone
Here is a simple example of three listings in the same market:
| Listing | Occupancy | Average nightly rate | RevPAR |
|---|---|---|---|
| A: chasing occupancy | 95% | $180 | $171 |
| B: chasing rate | 55% | $320 | $176 |
| C: balanced | 79% | $256 | $202 |
Listing A looks busy. Listing B looks premium. Listing C earns 15% to 18% more per available night than either. That is the balance we look for, listing by listing, measured against each market. More on the measure itself: RevPAR and RevPAR index and market penetration index, or check your own numbers with the RevPAR index calculator.
Why shorter minimum stays often earn more
Guests filter by length of stay. A 4-night minimum hides a listing from every 2-night search. Longer minimums usually suit the manager’s cleaning schedule more than the revenue. With cleaning charged to the guest, two 2-night stays often earn more than one 4-night stay, and shorter stays fill the calendar earlier, when guests pay more. We lift minimums for peak periods such as major holidays and events, and review the rule every week.
Your cadence with us
- Daily: morning market check and approved changes.
- Weekly: a call with your revenue manager covering what changed, why, and what is coming up.
- Monthly: strategy review for the season ahead: events, minimum stays, discount curves, floors.
- Quarterly: base-price review for every property.
- Always: your live dashboard. See the dashboard
Onboarding
- Free audit (48 business hours): you fill in a short form and email a 90-day booking export (CSV or Excel) to audit@airyield.co. We review your listings against their markets and send back your position plus three changes, yours to keep whether or not you sign up.
- Access (day 1-2): if you sign up, you add us as a user on your PriceLabs account. You stay the account owner, you can see everything we change, and you can remove our access at any time.
- Baseline (week 1): we record your current settings and performance against market so results are measured fairly.
- First changes (week 1-2): we start with the highest-impact fixes and explain each one.
- Ongoing: daily management, weekly calls, monthly review.
In-house hire, pricing tool alone, or Airyield?
| Pricing tool alone | In-house revenue manager | Airyield | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily review of every listing | Rarely | Yes, if capacity allows | Yes |
| Fixed cost | Tool subscription | Salary, on-costs, tools, recruiting | None: 1.5% of booking revenue, no monthly minimum |
| Key-person risk | n/a | High | Lower: system plus team |
| Every change explained | No | Depends | Yes, on your dashboard |
| Time to start | Immediate | Months to hire and train | Live within 14 days of signing |
For the full numbers on hiring in-house, see the cost of a revenue manager, or read when to hire a revenue manager.
Pricing
1.5% of booking revenue on managed listings, with no monthly minimum. Booking revenue means accommodation revenue: nightly rates, after refunds and channel host fees, excluding cleaning fees and taxes, counted in the month the stay checks out. No setup fee. No lock-in contract: cancel any time with 30 days’ notice. Your PriceLabs subscription is billed separately by PriceLabs.
A worked example: 24 listings at 58.4% occupancy and a $186.10 average nightly rate earn $952,058 in accommodation revenue a year. The fee at 1.5% is $14,281 a year, about $1,190 a month. Put another way, the fee is covered if RevPAR rises about 1.5%.
Full pricing and examples by portfolio size
Frequently asked questions
How many listings do I need? The service is built for operators with 15 or more listings, or a hotel or motel. That describes who it suits best, not a hard minimum. With fewer listings, PriceLabs on its own with a regular review is often enough, but you are welcome to ask.
Is the fee on gross or net revenue? The fee is 1.5% of accommodation revenue: nightly rates, after refunds and channel host fees, excluding cleaning fees and taxes. We show the calculation on every invoice.
Do you guarantee results? No. We don’t promise a fixed uplift. If it isn’t working, leave with 30 days’ notice.
Will you change things without telling me? No change goes live without a revenue manager’s approval, and every change appears on your dashboard with its reason. You can set price floors and rules we must work within.
Do you handle Vrbo, Booking.com and direct bookings? We manage rates through PriceLabs, which pushes to the channels and PMS you have connected.
What happens if I leave? Your PriceLabs account, settings and history stay with you. We remove our access and hand over a summary of current settings.
Do you work with boutique hotels and motels? Yes. See hotel revenue management and motel revenue management.
Want to know more about how we work inside PriceLabs? See PriceLabs management, or how we compare with Freewyld Foundry.
Airyield is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by PriceLabs, Airbnb, Vrbo or Booking.com.