Integration with PriceLabs

Looks like no users have commented on this yet. I can tell you, Chad, that many users do use PriceLabs and we don't see it being turned off much. From what we've heard, they are happy.

Chad, I'm using it on OR and AirBNB. I can tell you that it's increased my bookings a bit, as I'm better able to fill gaps now. But even in cases where I've had the same or even less number of bookings in a month, compared to last year, I've made more money. In some cases around 25% more.

Not pricelabs but other tools I used for 1.5 years./ namely Wheelhouse (AirBNB and TA) and beyondPricing (vrbo). I can say this - both have missed some "events" locally when the rate should have been raised and it wasn't. Wheelhouse was a bit better. Overall, once you are an established owner and KNOW your market and your competition,. the value of such tool diminishes to almost nothing in my experience. After 1.5 years I turned off. Yes I know it is not PL specifically but similar tools.

That may also depend on your area. The Smokies are a highly efficient place with a lot of supply and lot of demand. My town has several dozen vacation rentals in the vicinity of a small tourist town. We get maybe 1/40 of smokies visitors.

I am of the opinion that if 1% of my Revenue yield a 2% gain, it is worth it. In addition, I don't really want to try to constantly adjust my prices manually. My time has value. Supposedly wheelhouse is in cahoots with an event knowledgeable organization, but it doesn't integrate with ownerrez yet.

Hey folks - a bit off topic, but still relevant for diy pricing .

I made a screen recording below that shows how to grab a full calendar of nightly rates from a vrbo listing. I retrieved nightly rates from 7/19/2019 - 7/17/2021.

https://p14.f2.n0.cdn.getcloudapp.com/items/2NuxgYKy/Screen Recording 2019-07-19 at 09.37.11.23 AM.mp4

requires using excel but pretty straightforward and much easier than visually retyping rates.

Yep! You can actually suck these into OwnerRez directly (we use the same method) -- go to Settings > Spot Rates and use the Import from Channel button to pull in the spot rates from VRBO or Airbnb.

You can also export your current spot rates to Excel in the same location, or import a spreadsheet of spot rates to update them.

Chris - that would only work for your own unit, correct?

My use of this is to gather competitive pricing from 5-10 other properties.

But since you mentioned the capability, could you incorporate this kind of competitive pricing gathering into OR? Perhaps the ability to identify a set of 5-10 comparative properties, click a button and get a table of the competition's rates, with Max/Min/Avg/Median identified per night? That would be awesome ;-)

It would work for other units as well since we use the same public method you demonstrate in your video. You'd have to create a property for it in OwnerRez, though, to store the information.

Great idea on the competitive analysis tool! Although if that becomes well known I wonder if they will hide the rates on the public pages :-o

That is sort of what pricelabs or wheelhouse do isn't it? For example pricelabs help will show you different price ranges and how many Studio through 5 bedroom units are in each along with other types of information. But they do it for a whole Market not just a couple of units

@JTVRs - yes, the same kind of approach. I personally prefer to do the analysis myself, but I'll admit it's time consuming. I just don't trust a software algorithm to find the right comps, or do the proper weighting of tangible differences such as
- which direction a unit is facing (mountain view or side of building)
- full sized fridge or tiny
- degree of updating of furniture
- etc

I'm not dissing any of the dynamic pricing algorithms. They can do things in real time, repeatedly, night after night, week after week, which I cannot. They can detect (I presume) when there is a diminished supply and jack up my price. I find myself generally just reducing price as a date gets nearer, but I sometimes realize (duh!) that I was the last unit available and I rented for $100/night when I might have held out for another week and gotten $200/night.

In any case, my market of VRBO is about 40 comparable units. I don't really have competition outside of the building when I'm located (ski resort, limited condos).

So far so good, I turned it on for 1 of the 27 condos and just got our first booking using pricing from them! Woohoo! We will continue to monitor and report back but so far so good... Not having to worry about pricing is key here... I'm hopeful it will produce nice results over time!

Yes, but there Comes A Time you need to let go stop trying to get the last dollar. How much is your time and energy worth? If pricelabs cost 1% of your revenue and brings 2% additional, it was worth it. Nothing stops you from tweaking their prices, as they allow you to override as much as you want. But I doubt over time really is as useful as you suspect. It's like people who just had to screen everyone, while others went with instant booking and said you know it seems over time that it really doesn't make much difference.

" nice results" includes not having to track and worry about pricing for 27 units. Your time is also money.

Do you know how to take a list of spot rates in pricelabs and it is now updating into ownerrez. How do I get these rates to update my vrbo listing and keep updating them in pricelabs and then it will keep updating in ownerrez and then all I would need to do is press sync and it will automatically update the pricing from pricelabs into my vrbo listing.

Sure thing! You can have pricelabs automatically update the rates into OwnerRez. Then in OwnerRez you can push the rates on to VRBO.

Here's how to set up the PriceLabs integration into OwnerRez: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/pricelabs

And here's how to push rates from OwnerRez to VRBO: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/push-rate-airbnb-homeaway-vrbo