September 15, 2018

If you only update your rates once per year, you’re missing out on the potential profits offered by dynamic pricing systems. When your prices adjust dynamically based on variables like occupancy, stay length, or seasonal demand, you’re able to optimize your rental pricing structure to better meet the needs of both your clientele and your bottom line. Before you embrace the dynamic pricing revolution to make your vacation rental property management business perfectly streamlined, you’ll need to assess and tweak a number of aspects of how you operate your company.

Optimize Your Property Management System

If you’re an established rental manager, your property management system (PMS) is likely the lifeblood of your business. These pieces of software allow you to manage multiple rentals through a single streamlined interface, but they only do what you tell them to do. If you’re using a PMS that was provided by a third party, it’s important to check if it can handle dynamic rates before you proceed. Even if your current PMS can’t handle this type of pricing, you can always pick a different program or work directly with a developer to achieve your goals.

Dynamic pricing rates are based on a system of rules, and the way that your PMS recognizes these rules and transforms them into rental rates that appears on a customer’s screen is integral to providing these special types of rates to your clients. If you aren’t managing your PMS yourself, you’ll need to work closely with your staff as you work to implement dynamic pricing into your overall rental reservation structure.

Provide Excellent Onboarding for Your Staff

As your vacation rental management company gets caught up with the latest trends in dynamic pricing, you should account for some necessary adjustment time. If you’ve been updating pricing manually up until this point, learning the intricacies of dynamic pricing can be overwhelming, and you’ll want to make sure that all of your staff members understand what to do and what not to do when it comes to this new profit-driving reservation system.

When your staff members take reservations, they’ll need to remember a new set of rules, and they may need to learn how to navigate an entirely new computer system. While guests are used to the idea of fluctuating reservation pricing, your boots on the ground may be entirely new to the process, and the quality of your guest experience depends on the ability of each staff member to get on board with the changes and continue delivering the types of remarkable experiences that modern vacation rental guests love to share on social media.

Bolster Your Website’s Power

Even though some people may still choose to make rental reservations in person or over the phone, the overwhelming majority of reservations are now made online or on mobile devices. As you integrate dynamic pricing into your reservation process, your website will go through a number of changes, and you’ll need to make sure that both your mobile and desktop sites can handle these upgrades in style.

If you’re still using a static rate table, you’ll need to get with the times. Dynamic pricing makes static rates meaningless or cumbersome, and you’ll need to create a more interactive reservation process if you want your guests to feel welcome. For example, you can create an in-page interactive calendar that displays the dates where the desired rental is available, or you can set up a smart text field where guests can enter their desired dates. Either way, dialogues will pop up that inform your future guests of the dynamic pricing options that you offer.