PriceLabs High Five Masterclass Day 1 Q&A (May2026)

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]And we can get into the Q&A. And we've got a decent chunk of questions.

[00:00:04]So, give me just some time to go through these and we will answer them up.

[00:00:13]All right. Tammy says, "When looking to set my base price, reviewed weekly, I get to the I can get to the option based on market data, but it's not showing the amount based on listing performance, which is very important. Seems the market price is too high. Calendar's kind of empty for May and June." Um which is not very common. Um got a lot of direct bookings recently, which is awesome to hear. Direct bookings are good. Um I really wish I could advise specifically on yours, Tammy. What I'm going to do with yours, Tammy, I'm going to leave it open so that somebody on our team can go in and look um like actually log into your account and look at it live and and give you some recommendations, but I'm going to leave yours up, Tammy. I just didn't want you to think I was bypassing you.

[00:00:55]All right.

[00:00:57]Kellen says, "We can use PriceLabs to apply last-minute bookings. However, Airbnb last-minute discounts provide extra advantages such as being showcased on emails. How do you balance using Airbnb pricing discount rule sets versus the simplicity versatility of PriceLabs?" This question and Kellen, this question comes up multiple times every time we have a master class and I'm willing to bet there's probably a couple of other questions in here that are very similar to yours.

[00:01:22]There are benefits to using Airbnb's mechanisms.

[00:01:29]Those benefits are for Airbnb.

[00:01:32]While it may look like it's helping you, it's not necessarily really helping you.

[00:01:37]If you talk to any Airbnb rep, they're going to tell you that one of the most important things is having the right price on the right day.

[00:01:46]We at PriceLabs will tell you revenue management is having the right product at the right price on the right day to the right audience, all of that good stuff.

[00:01:56]But what Airbnb does with the last-minute discounting, I'm going to try I'm going to share my screen and I'm going to try to walk everybody through this and describe it as well as I can.

[00:02:08]So right now, this price is $95 on the 20th.

[00:02:14]Yesterday, it was $82.

[00:02:18]The day before it might have been like 105.

[00:02:21]And then tomorrow, this 95 may be 90.

[00:02:25]And then it may be 85 and then it may be 80.

[00:02:29]And you would think that what Airbnb would do would say whatever that price is, that $80 that Price Labs is now sending, take something off of it. If you say 10%, take 10% off of that 80, now my rate after I take $8 off is $72.

[00:02:44]But that's not how Airbnb works. Airbnb actually says, okay, the price is 75. It was 80, it was 85, it was 90, it was 95, it was 82, it was 105. It takes your rates from the past 30 days, averages them, and then applies the discount. So if you're using a system like Price Labs where your rates kind of start here and they do this and then they maybe do this, they're not actually doing the discount off of whatever your current rate is, they're doing it off of the average of the last 30 days. So if you think about it, if you started at 140 and you're at 70 now and you want 10% taken off of it, we're doing this. So they're taking 10% off of a number that's too high.

[00:03:27]Just something to think about there, but ultimately I would not recommend using their last-minute methodology.

[00:03:34]I would recommend using Price Labs because you want to have the right rate.

[00:03:38]That would be the way I would set up and I think most people at Airbnb would tell you as well, if you had the option, I have the exact rate that somebody wants to pay or I have a rate that's really, really high and then I use your influence to go in and take a percentage off of that, they're going to say have that rate right.

[00:03:58]Rats. Dale, when looking at the RevPAR metric, when using a channel manager, does it account for channel specific pricing increases?

[00:04:11]It's a good question, Dale, and it depends on how you are set up in PriceLabs. If you if you were connected to PriceLabs via Airbnb and booking.com, like let's say this one's Airbnb, this one's booking.com, they're the same listing, you'd be able to use our portfolio analytics stuff, which we'll talk a little bit more later um later on in the course.

[00:04:31]You would be able to use that to actually see it specifically. If you're using a property management system, you should be able to see that in your property management system, um but no, there is not a way necessarily, if you're using a property management system, to account for channel specific pricing increases outside of inside your um property management system.

[00:04:55]Let's see.

[00:04:57]PriceLabs is recommending a base rate, and we have decided to accept it for our Airbnb listing. However, we don't know how to set the minimum.

[00:05:04]We need to be able to at least earn our bottom line, right? How to determine what minimum. So, Jamie, Anthony, hopefully kind of answered that a little bit when we talked about the minimum price, but go ahead and calculate what your true minimum price is. It sounds like you all already kind of have that set up. Calculate whatever that true minimum is and go with that, and it sounds like you've already done the due diligence.

[00:05:27]Ooh, Amanda. How do I set base price for lakefront property with no available comps?

[00:05:36]I would love to know what market you're in that doesn't have any comps, because in that case, you need to just buy up the whole lake and then start selling the heck out of that place. Um but, if you have a property that doesn't have a lot of good comps, so to speak, or you're in a very rural area, the base price help tool is going to branch out.

[00:05:55]But if you're in that situation and you're looking at this, and I'm just going to hop in and we're in in the base price help tool and we're pretending that we are this lakefront property that doesn't really have available comps.

[00:06:08]It's going to be a lot more spread out than this. You're going to have people that are You're going to have comps from up in here, and comps from here and here.

[00:06:15]In that situation, if you truly have the only lakefront property that's on there, I'm going that upscale recommendation and seeing what it feels like for that market driven.

[00:06:23]Um, now Amanda, I'm going to leave yours open, that way our team can respond to you if we can see what the actual um account is that you're looking at, but that would be my recommendation with very little information provided. Um, I would come in and try to I would accept upscale if I was in your situation.

[00:06:42]And then if you can, you can also come in and draw around a specific area. So let's just again, sorry, let me ah Didn't mean to kill that for you guys.

[00:06:54]So I'm I'm working in a hypothetical.

[00:06:57]Let's say these properties over here are the ones that are closest to the lake.

[00:07:01]You can come and use this polygon tool and say, well, let me select just this segment of those properties.

[00:07:10]So now that's done that, I hit save area.

[00:07:13]Let's influence my market driven. I went from 519 to 570 here.

[00:07:18]But then when I go to upscale, now I'm at 733. I think prior to me doing this, it was like 650 or 680.

[00:07:26]Let's ink clear area.

[00:07:28]So yeah, 656. So by dialing this in as well and looking at a more specific area, you can make that even more impactful. Hope that helps you out.

[00:07:39]Da da da da da da da Uh good question here Jamie and Anthony.

[00:07:46]When PriceLabs factors in ADR occupancy and 30 days pick up into the market driven base price, does that mean they are only considering what our listing did in the past 30 days and not what the market did? It's actually taking how you performed versus how the market performed. So if your ADR came in at $100, the market's ADR came in at 120, you would have a negative impact on ADR.

[00:08:09]If your ADR came in at 140, but theirs came in at one 120, you'd have a positive impact on that from there. Same with your occupancy. If you achieve 30% occupancy, but the market achieved 25%, you would have a positive impact on there. If you were at 25, the market was at 30, you would have a negative impact on there.

[00:08:31]Oh Stephanie, I'm sorry I did not I'm sorry I saw this one 30 minutes after you you answered the question. Um this is something that will happen if you are newer in PriceLabs.

[00:08:40]If you've just started up, the system does take 14 to 21 days to come up with a base price recommendation. You'll also find times that if you've made a bunch of changes or you've done date specific overrides or you've come in and you've changed your base price a few times, this right here will say unavailable sometimes. If it ever comes up and it says unavailable, just hit review prices, help me choose a base price, and then under recommendation right here, you should see when that next one would come through. It should give you a date saying, "Hey, even though you don't have a recommendation, expect it between May 9th and May 12th."

[00:09:23]Will, if you are in PriceLabs and adjusting your pricing regularly, does it give you a bump in the Airbnb algorithm?

[00:09:30]Yes, to an extent. It's not necessarily that you're adjusting prices in PriceLabs. It's they see that you're active in your listing and that you're trying to get the right price for the right customer and trying to make them money, so to speak. So, if you're sitting there at a $300 minimum and your rate doesn't move and you just stay at 300, eventually they're going to look at it and say, and I'm I'm putting a human aspect into the algorithm, but the algorithm's going to look and say, "Can't make any money off this guy.

[00:09:57]Prices are at $200 right now. He's at 300. Eh, ignore him."

[00:10:01]But, if your rates are constantly going, "Okay, 300, 280, 270, 250." And they're saying, "Okay, well, the market was at two like and you're starting to get closer to market average." It's just going to lift you up. So, yes, having your rates consistently moving is beneficial. Not necessarily that it's PriceLabs moving it, but the fact that they can see you're trying to get a booking and ultimately you're trying to make Airbnb more money.

[00:10:27]All of the things that And I hope this makes sense when I'm saying I'm trying to humanize the algorithm.

[00:10:34]But, if you go in and you take your minimum stay from three nights to two nights, the algorithm in human form would look at it and go, "Oh, more people can see you now.

[00:10:43]It's you're not like they don't have to book a three-night stay, they have to book a two-night stay. So, in theory, more people are going to see you. So, let's bump you up." If you take your photos and you make them more enticing, so that when somebody clicks on it and they go, "Oh, yeah, I'm converting on this one. I love these pictures."

[00:10:59]The algorithm's going to say, "Hey, good job, buddy. We're going to bump you up."

[00:11:03]The more you give to the algorithm, the more you're going to get from it, if that makes Hopefully that that makes sense to you.

[00:11:11]Da da.

[00:11:15]Jonathan has an interesting question.

[00:11:18]Um, and again, I I don't want to give specific advice on this one just because I can't see everything into it. But, Jonathan said he launched a Colorado uh mountain property. It's imported base price was $499. Market driven is 392.

[00:11:32]He went with market driven but concerned that pricing is too low. Should you follow imported or market? And what I would say in that one, Jonathan, is if you are if you think the imported price, like what you had been doing was good, you can go with that imported price.

[00:11:50]If you're worried you might undersell something, I would recommend going somewhere between those two. Like based off the way you worded this, it sounds like you're very concerned that that market driven price is not going to send it up enough during high season, probably during your ski season, cuz we know we need a good ski season next year.

[00:12:09]But what I would do in that situation is I would split it down the middle. If you're that concerned about it, there's no problem with you starting your base price a little high and then bringing it back.

[00:12:22]Just make sure you're paying attention to the base price help tool and the recommendations. If you go in there and instead of taking the $392 market driven, say you start at 450, make sure you're checking it every week, every 2 weeks, because what the system will do is say, "Okay, 450 didn't work.

[00:12:38]Let's get ourselves down to 420 and work toward that 392." That would be how I would look at it. If you're concerned about losing some high value bookings, ultimately market driven base price is going to be pretty pretty solid for you.

[00:12:51]Um But yeah, that that would be my my recommendation in that situation.

[00:13:00]Uh how does the base price recommendation factor in off-platform bookings for or special events? For example, I direct booked for 2.5 weeks for CMAs off platforms.

[00:13:11]If we're not able to pick it up in the data that we're ingesting, it's not going to be impactful at all. It will just kind of show up as a block or as occupancy.

[00:13:22]In that situation, Carol, um my my follow-up question would be, are you using a property management system or is it just kind of like "Hey, you knew somebody and they they wrote you a check and they're going to stay there and you block the calendars on Airbnb or Vrbo." If it's the latter where you just block the calendars on Airbnb and Vrbo, we're not really going to be able to um like whatever the ADR is is not going to have an impact on PriceLabs' recommendations. We would look and say it's occupied. So, that would show occupied that would that would increase you for occupancy, but we wouldn't be able to see what that ADR is.

[00:14:04]Britney says, "I don't understand the new details. It states based on your listing's performance, suggested price calibration is 370. However, it states future prices based on market data, they suggest 357. Which is it?

[00:14:18]Why does it suggest both and what's the difference?" Um Britney, I'm going to leave yours open so that somebody can look at it. I think what we're talking about is the difference between these two right here, um but I'm not 100% sure. Again, my apologies.

[00:14:31]I'm answering the question 30 minutes after you asked it. Um but my assumption is that we're looking at it this way.

[00:14:36]Market-driven is kind of where you should be at. Recommended is how far off you are from that market-driven one. If there's something else in there, um I'll have our team look at it and and get back to you, but I'm going to leave this question open so that we know that.

[00:14:55]The 25th percentile that Kyle just mentioned doesn't seem to take into account holidays or events because it stays relatively steady. Does it take into account a special events in your area? It does, but the thing is that 25th percentile and that what we look at in the market, it's based off whoever, you know, has that property. So, you may be very right like the bottom end of the market being at 300 all the way across the board, it's probably cuz somebody like a good chunk of the market has um has their pricing very flat. So, it's not recommending that PriceLabs says and hang on. Oh, thought I was sharing my screen. I'll share my screen again real quick.

[00:15:35]And turning some noise off so we don't scare people off.

[00:15:40]And again, I'm I'm going to break all this stuff down for you all tomorrow.

[00:15:43]But when we talk about this and we're talking about that 25th to 50th percentile, this right here where it's at 96, if we were going all the way across and it pretty much stayed at 96, this is just what the bottom end of the market is pricing at.

[00:15:55]Generally speaking, you can say those people at the bottom end are going to be using flat pricing. They're not going to have good um system set up. As we can kind of see like right here looking at the Chicago Marathon, 25th percentile is 160 to 251.

[00:16:12]Pricing should be in the 400s like 300s, 400s. So, it's usually people in the bottom end of the market that aren't necessarily doing that great of a job with revenue management.

[00:16:22]Or people that are doing a really good job of revenue management and realize their properties don't have crazy amount of value and they're setting it towards the bottom.

[00:16:32]Da da da.

[00:16:36]Okay, Selene asked about the um recommended base price to base price ratio and where that was. So, that is right here in ad metrics. You're going to have to add that to it, but you can hit that red button.

[00:16:48]And then you're going to find that recommended base price to base price ratio there and you can update there.

[00:17:07]About max price set, PriceLabs pushing extremely high priced Airbnb as average price, which is reducing the visibility in search rankings and Airbnb is flag it it as a reason for low visibility. How to fix this situation?

[00:17:20]Shree, if your rates are getting pushed extremely high kind of across the board, that's not going to necessarily be you need a maximum price. What that's going to be from from my perspective is we probably need to dial that base price back to a more realistic level.

[00:17:39]Just something to think about. So, I would say take a look at your base price, see where it sits in the market.

[00:17:44]If you're sitting towards the very, very top end of the market and you're still pushing too high, you can look at tweaking some customizations. I don't want to put too much out right now, but we're going to talk about some of those customizations tomorrow and Wednesday. So, hopefully I'll be able to answer that a little bit better for you.

[00:18:01]Um and I'm going to try to find one more for us. Daniel, unfortunately, I cannot see the screenshot that you added.

[00:18:15]Sorry, I'm trying to find one that might be super impactful.

[00:18:21]Okay, has he talked about that one?

[00:18:24]Does the events and This is a good question, Celine. Does the events and holidays average price look at distance from the venue? Also, does it look at similar properties? Yes, it does look at similar properties and yes, it does look at distance from the venue. So, if you are really, really, really close to a venue, your demand factor would be a little bit higher than somebody that's going to be 20, 15 miles away from it or kilometers away from it. So, the closer you are to the stadium, that will have a separate impact for you because it's hyper local is is the way we describe it.

[00:18:57]All right, and then Alex, great question. Is it possible to see exactly what amenities are causing my market-driven base price suggestion to drop? As of right now, there is not a easy way to see that. Do you that's something that our team's working on is trying to make sure that as much visibility as we have into our competitors and ourselves as well. Now with that, we've gone a little bit over.

[00:19:20]My apologies. El E or Eli, I see you asking about going over World Cup pricing. Unfortunately, this is not the the platform for World Cup pricing, but we do have a lot of information out there for you. So, I'm going to share my screen real quick. Right, I'm still sharing my screen.

[00:19:35]If you have questions about what's happening with the World Cup, go to hello.pricelabs.co co and we've changed Oh, nope. Where's it at? Karishma, where did they go with it?

[00:19:47]Where's our World Cup thing?

[00:19:49]Let me find the link. Just 1 second. All right, she's going to drop the link. We literally apparently updated our website this weekend. Yeah. All right, perfect.

[00:19:57]So, she's going to send it over um for you in the recap email. Thank you all for joining us. My apologies for going a little long. Tomorrow's going to be a great um I guess I guess we can call it episode. I'm podcast guy, so I talk episodes. But, we're going to figure out seasonal pricing, make sure holiday pricing looks good. We're going to walk through our tool tips, we're going to talk about booking window, and we're going to dive in and talk about the neighborhood data, which is the most important part of PriceLabs that you can learn.

[00:20:26]Base price is number one for making the the engine go, but neighborhood data is the space that you want to learn if you want to learn how to use PriceLabs to the fullest extent.

[00:20:34]Thank you all for joining us. Appreciate you being here while I'm all long-winded and caffeinated.

[00:20:39]We will see you tomorrow. Please come back and join us. And don't forget Friday, we're going to do a live listing review. So, want you there for that as well. Have a wonderful day.