Welcome to Boostly Podcast Episode 580.
In this Boostly podcast episode, Mark is joined by Anurag Verma, one of the co-founders of PriceLabs, a dynamic pricing tool for vacation rentals.
They discuss how they have fine-tuned and optimized the pricing for one of Boostly's clients, who owns a vacation rental property in Orlando.
They have been optimizing everything about the business for direct bookings and to get more bookings.
By implementing some unique optimization techniques, they have been able to pinpoint some areas where they can increase revenue per booking.
They look at basic settings such as the minimum price and the base price, and some performance metrics.
They realize that there is room for the base price to go higher because The client is doing well in terms of occupancy.
Anurag suggests that there should be at least a 10-15% difference between the minimum price and the base price.
They discuss how dynamic pricing works and how it can help vacation rental owners increase their profits.
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Timestamps (audio)
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Transcript from the Episode
Intro
[00:00:00] Mark: Welcome back to a very special episode of the Boostly Podcast. In this episode, what we're gonna do is we are going to fine tune and we are going to optimize a, uh, Of Boostly a client of Boostly, a Boostly team members, price Labs, and Dynamic Pricing Live. We've the founder, one of the co-founders of Price Labs, uh, Anurag Verma, um, Anurag if you don't know, he's one of the co-authors of The Book Direct Blueprint.
[00:00:23] Uh, one of the co-founders of Price Labs and as a fantastic product. And we've been working with CUNY Perez, based in Orlando. And, um, over the course of this year, we've been optimizing everything about the business for, for Direct bookings, but most importantly to get it bookings because when we first came, The, the bookings were bras, brassic.
[00:00:41] There was not many bookings. It just started up last November. January is a bit there, but now thankful to say the, the property's getting full. Now the property's getting full, but there's a reason why, and it's not because of the amazing property and not cause of the amazing listings, but because of how the pricing was set up.
[00:00:55] And you can argue now because he was ahead of the market, the pricing was too low. So by optimizing Price Labs and by putting in some, some real places, and we're gonna get this optimized live with the founder of Price Labs, we're able to to pinpoint some unique things that we can do. We've implemented them and I'm gonna be really excited to check back and report back on this later on in the year.
[00:01:16] To show the benefits of this. Um, so without further ado, let me flip the screen. This is a Zoom call between me and Mr. Verma of Price Labs. Thank you very much again, Anurag, for doing this. And do go check out Price Labs, uh, P R I C E L A B S. I'll leave the logo up here, go and check it out and, um, make sure that you are.
[00:01:34] Optimizing your dynamic pricing for for more profit. Okay. Anurag so, thank you very much for doing this. We're obviously looking at escape bookings and Kenney's account here to try and see if we can tweak any additional revenue per per booking. Cause obviously Orlando, there's a lot of properties down there.
[00:01:50] It's a very up and down market. And in the past, Kenny's just had a set. And obviously when you have a set right, you miss out on such potential revenue, but that you could have. Um, so yeah, I'm excited to dig into this. Thank you for doing it. And throw us, I'll pass on to yourself and let's see what we can unearth with with all this juicy data.
[00:02:09] Anurag: Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing, uh, uh, sharing this and getting me on, uh, on your mark. But, uh, getting into this, so this is what, uh, Q News would probably see when he logs in, uh, any day to to price labs, right? When, when I look at this account, uh, and, and his. Uh, just without even getting into the details, just looking at some basic settings, the minimum price and the base price, uh, and some performance metrics.
Account First Look
[00:02:41] Um, I like, there is one thing that clearly jumps out to me. Um, so two things are happening. His minimum price is 2 39. He's saying never go below 2 39. He's, he's in some way set that as his operational minimum price, and then the base price, he's set it as like, Three bucks more than the minimum price. Now, base prices sort of, we think of it as on average across the year, across the highs, across the lows.
[00:03:09] How much would you want to sell at right now? If your, uh, base is 2 42, it means that during, uh, low season and during low demand periods, we would try to go lower, but there's not really much room left here, right? So gently speaking. We say there should be at least a 10 to 15% difference between these two numbers, right?
[00:03:32] Uh, so one of these two numbers has to move. Uh, it's, it's either 2 39 has to go lower, or 2 42 has to go higher now. Which one should move, uh, becomes, uh, uh, is the question. Uh, and, and in this case, it's very easy for me to see. Uh, and that's because if I look at his, his seven day occupancy, it's sitting at a hundred percent comfortably beating the market 30 day, 30 day occupancies.
[00:03:57] Like in the upcoming 30 days, how much are you booked? How much is the market book again, comfortably beating the market and next 60 day occupancy, again, comfortably beating the market. So like there is room. In the base price to go a little bit higher because he's doing well. He's like, uh, and, and there's sometimes like this one comfortably beating the market is what you want to see.
[00:04:21] There are plenty of markets there, which, where the occupancy the next 30 days is, or in the next seven days is. 40% and you don't want to be like 45%. Yes, you're beating the market, but not by much. And there's plenty of room. Like I would rather be like twice as booked rather than be 45% booked. Right? Uh, as long as it's coming at a good price, like it, it shouldn't be that to, to be two x occupied.
[00:04:47] You're cutting your price by your third and, and making less money in, in return, right? Mm-hmm. But, uh, but if all three numbers are comfortably beating the market, then I, I generally say, okay, there, there's room here to, to bump it up. We'll see some of that when we dig into the details. So let's, let's, uh, go into the property itself and the, these are the settings that we had talked about, right?
The minimum price and the base price
[00:05:10] The minimum price and the base price. And if I click over at, help me choose the base price, uh, let's see what it says. What you'll see here is it's saying that we are recommending that the base price be 2 53. So, so we are, we are asking like a 5% bump, so not, not the 10, 15% that, that I had, uh, hoped for.
[00:05:34] But you're saying, Hey, you're performing well enough that you can try bumping the price a little bit up and, and what's happening here that, uh, we are basically saying you're booking better than the market. And, and we, we generate these recommendations every, like, every week we are looking at your property and seeing how it's, how it's performing and saying, do you need the base price to be higher or lower base price?
[00:05:55] Uh, for anyone who, who hasn't been into Price Labs is sort of the key starting point in some ways, which is. Uh, reflective of the listings, uh, how, how good the listing is. Uh, pretty much that. And, and, uh, there is a, I've, I've chosen the words very carefully here. I'm saying how good the listing is and not how good the property is, uh, because you could have a great property and if the pictures are bad, if the.
[00:06:23] The copy is bad. If the title is bad and it's not getting booked, then it's a poor listing. Uh, and what gets booked by people online is the listing. Uh, people stay at the property, people book the listing, right? So, uh, as the, the property doesn't change over time. But the listing description might improve and, and that might be part of it, right?
[00:06:45] Like that over time, maybe this base price of 2 42 was fine, but as your property gets more, or as your listing gets more reviews, as your listing get, uh, you improve the copy, you improve things, it'll start performing better. And as it starts, as it performs better, uh, our system recognizes that and says, Hey, look, uh, for the same property now, You're doing better.
[00:07:05] You should be able to raise prices, uh, given how well you're doing. Mm-hmm. Uh, so that base price. Is an essential starting point for us to say, uh, we recommend one, uh, we show you what the market is starting. So market, uh, surprisingly, is very close to what, uh, what, uh, five and six bedrooms in the location are.
[00:07:25] This is, this is what, uh, he must have chosen in his account already to say, this is what I compete against. Uh, and, and again, he's, he's, he's saying he's an upscale property. So like he has picked these filters and said, okay, market is at 2 38 and. He picked 2 42. Now we are saying you can go even higher.
[00:07:44] Like you're, you're doing well, uh, essentially, right? Um, so that's, that's one. Now the reason it becomes important is, uh, this listing is in. This property is in Orlando, uh, a little bit away from Orlando, but in the Orlando area. Um, and you'll see that for spring break. Generally speaking, the price is like, the base price is 2 42, but, uh, most of the, most of the spring break, like March is booked.
[00:08:11] Uh, a ton of April is also booked. A lot of the midweek in here is, is sitting at that 2 39 it, it's sitting at that minimum price. And, uh, the minimum price, at least for us, is sort of a threshold. It says our algorithm might, might be recommending going a little further down, but you said 2 39, you're going to stick to 2 39 and you'll see that, uh, what's, what seems to be happening crazy enough is a lot of the dates that are unbooked are sitting at that 2 39.
[00:08:42] So, um, If, if he reduces the base price a little, um, sorry, the minimum price a little bit. There might be a little more activity on those dates that are, that are going on both. Um, so there might be some from the play there as well. Uh, essentially, Does that,
[00:09:00] Mark: uh, the question I have here so far? Yeah. The question I have is with the base price, um, obviously there's a recommended one, but he has to come into here, come into this piece to see it and change it.
[00:09:12] Is there a way with price labs that the base price will always be, uh, set to what your recommended price will be? Is there an automated way of doing.
[00:09:21] Anurag: Not yet, but coming up later this month is, uh, you know how I looked at all of these numbers and said, I think you should increase the base price. And then I went into there.
[00:09:32] Yeah, we will, we'll start showing you that recommendation right here and tell you that, Hey, even if you don't go, it go. There'll be an accept button here to say Yeah. Just, okay. Let's do it. Um, yeah. Nice. Very nice. Uh,
[00:09:48] Mark: And will that the same thing be there for the minimum price or is that just for the base?
[00:09:53] Anurag: Start off, we are doing it with the base price, but we'll also want to do it with the minimum price because they go like so hand in hand together here. Hand in hand, yeah. Yeah.
A recommended price
[00:10:01] Mark: So with this being said then, sorry, just a very quick Yeah. Minimum price. With this being said, when you went into April, you could very clearly and certainly see.
[00:10:10] Dates that are available are at the lower price. And you said, well, maybe if we tweak it a little bit and lower it just a little bit, it may have a result in booking with, with something like this. And from what the data is showing you here, what would you say would be a, a recommended price just to maybe lower it too?
[00:10:24] Are we talking maybe like a couple of dollars, what we sort of say in here when it costs that minimum. So the,
[00:10:31] Anurag: uh, when we talk about the base price, we, we have this tool that shows you like, okay, upscale, six bedroom, five bedroom, whatnot. Now we are talking about specific dates, and for those, if you want to get more intelligence on like what's happening in the market, we generally say, let's go to this neighborhood data tab.
[00:10:51] Where we, we give fairly detailed information about what's happening on, uh, on each date, pretty much like how is the market charging on, on different dates? How is the, uh, Uh, how is the market priced on, on different dates and things like that? So let's, let's look at this. So the, this red line is the occupancy.
[00:11:13] So like going until sort of mid-April, early April, it's pretty solid and then it starts falling off, right? This is the market occupancy. Yeah. And if you look at Q'S occupancy, even that, like these big solid gray blocks are night that are occupied. So like till. 16th. He's pretty solidly booked. The market is also doing pretty solidly well, and then there are these periods where like things are a little lean and those periods are where the top chart is now price.
[00:11:46] The, the black line is showing you that the price still April end are, are pretty high, the prices and then they start going down as occupancy is going down. But. This straight line is when they start hitting that, that minimum price. Right? Um, we generally tend to say that when, uh, The, the bands that you see behind are sort of the, what, what are the market prices?
[00:12:12] So the pink, the light pink is like the higher end prices. The, the dark pink is sort of the middle brand, and then the gray one is the lower end. And of course there's, there's some other stuff above on each end as well. Uh, CUNY is not like singularly higher than everybody else at the market, but what this is showing.
[00:12:30] We only say when that is high season when a lot of things are going to get booked. You want, if you're an upscale property, you want to be up there. Uh, but when it is low season or when things are going to be not as booked, you might want to descend into the middle territory. So like, uh, The, the reason is, if, if, if 90% of the market is going to get booked, or 80% of the market is going to get booked, uh, you can, you can be priced a little higher than you, uh, you would on at a normal time of the year and, and still get booked.
[00:13:05] Everything is going to go off the market like almost everything. If you're a good enough property with good reviews on your. Things are fine.
[00:13:12] Mark: I was gonna say, and then low season, I was, sorry, I was just, very quickly I was gonna say that if anybody's watching and um, is worried about that, then there's always a way of getting the price back up per night with upsells.
[00:13:24] So people don't like, sort of dis, they sort of dismiss upsells really quickly and say, well make a difference. Or, you know, they, um, they think, oh, well I'm, you know, if I add an upsell, it's just gonna be extra revenue. But if you are going $20, Your on your normal rate, that will mean you get the book in and then as soon as they book, you can then say, would you like our upsell of whatever that would be, and you can mark it up so you can make that money back.
[00:13:48] Anurag: Yeah. Uh, one thing I will say is, uh, although those dates are sitting at their minimum, they're also a little farther away. And what might as well happen? As the dates get closer, uh, somebody will, will book those off. Uh, so like, uh, although I'm saying, hey, look, maybe, uh, if you want to proactively book, maybe lower it, uh, there is also some level of li risk tolerance associated here to say like, okay, like maybe I'll, I'll hold off to, uh,
[00:14:22] Mark: So here's the next question, and I think, um, I know what you're going to do, but is there a way where we're, how many days out now?
[00:14:29] We're about a month away. So four weeks away from this, is there a way that we can, with the lower price, can we reduce the rate? And then the closer it gets to that date, then the price then starts to go back up to its normal base price or the normal price that we.
[00:14:43] Anurag: Yeah, there are a couple of things that can be done.
[00:14:46] Uh, remember the price is minimum price is 2 39 here. Yeah. Uh, I'm, I'm not going to save any of this. Yeah. But what you could do is you could say, look, let's be okay with two 20. Uh, let's say that at two 20, if I get a booking, I'm, I'm still profitable. As, as long as I'm not losing money on a booking, it, it's okay to take it.
239 is still sort of a mental threshold
[00:15:10] Right. Uh, but you could say 2 39 is still sort of, Some mental threshold or barrier to say, ideally I would want that, right? Let's say what you can do is, sorry, wrong, please. You can say if a date is more than two months out. I want that minimum price to be 2 39. Yeah. So don't start selling April, 2024 at two 30 just yet, or even may for for two 30.
[00:15:48] But once the date is within 60 days now, use my minimum price of two 20. So, so you can create these two tiers in some ways to say, uh, My minimum price can change depending on how far out it is. Uh, and, and same thing with, uh, prices themselves. And some of these things are automatically being applied, like last minute discounts and, and occupancy adjustments.
[00:16:15] So like there are things that are automatically in place to say, If a date is, uh, so suppose these, these sets of dates stay unbooked. As you get closer and closer, what would happen is that these health numbers will start looking, looking worse. And that in itself, like our base price recommendations, want to see those, uh, health numbers be bad for a, a, a few weeks to say.
[00:16:45] Okay, we should make a change. Like at, at the drop of a hat. It's not going to say, let's change your base price. Like certainly I am, but what we, what we do have is, is what you, and, and these are on by default. Uh, you can say in the next 15 days, if I'm less than 10% booked. For those 15 days, automatically drop the price.
[00:17:06] Yeah. Uh, they're still, they're still going to stick to your minimum price. So like, if it's 2 39 now and it stays unbooked, uh, it's not like it'll go any lower because your minimum is 2 39. But if you actually end up changing your minimum to two 20, then maybe it'll, it'll drop down twice. Uh, there is, there is some benefit to that from an OTA perspective as well.
[00:17:30] Uh, because when the prices drop for book dates that have not booked, uh, they, they start showing with some promotion or things like that,
[00:17:37] Mark: uh, as well.
[00:17:43] Lovely. Cool. Lovely. So yeah, so that's fantastic. So basically we can look at those dates and obviously it's saying here that over three days we're about 94%, which is great. But we ideally know that, you know, these dates here are Sunday to Wednesday. It could be after spring break. Uh, but we wanna get them, it could be proactive in getting them in, getting them booked.
[00:18:03] And if we, if we looked at the market data that we did and we saw that, that little line just under. It was sort of probably around the 2 21 mark, like, like we said, two 20, got mark. Yep. If we drop the price to that, then it may proactively get it booked, but we don't want anybody booking that lower price too far out.
[00:18:23] So if we could change it to say, uh, 30 days out, um, anything booked after 30 days, it's at least that minimum of whatever it was. But because we wanna be proactively booking what could be seen as a slow time. Um, we want to be able to minimum put those dates at that price to get it booked, but as soon as it press presses, passes that threshold, then we're sort of doing it at that rate.
[00:18:47] Anurag: Yep. Um, if you want to be like, if, if you, for whatever reason know that, hey, look, So, uh, let me see here. In April here. Okay, so let, let's say you say for whatever reason that these dates, I'm absolutely sure this is very low demand. I have seen the data itself not going to book, and you say, I want to proactively reduce this one.
[00:19:14] You could go and say, okay. Only for this period make the minimum price two 20. Yeah. Uh, so, so, so you can practice, do those things or you can create rules to do those things depending on how far out it is and things like that. Yeah. Um, brilliant. The other thing that was very, uh, curious to me, I guess not, not the right phrase, uh, I was very curious about, uh, Is, is the fact that there, there seems to be Thursday, Friday, two night reservations here.
Effectively broken down your weekend
[00:19:49] Uh, There are only two back to back, I guess, in some ways. But, uh, what they mean is that this Saturday night, uh, which generally tend to be in demand, ends up sitting empty here. Um, so I was trying to see like what could be done to avoid this, uh, because by taking a two night reservation here, you're effectively broken down your weekend.
[00:20:17] You have split your weekend now, right? Like you, you could have taken a single weekend booking there and, and now you don't. Um, and I do see that he has a three night minimum for Fridays and Saturdays. Let's, let's review these settings. Uh, yeah. So what he's done is he has said, let's do a two night.
[00:20:35] Minimum on, uh, weekdays and three nights on weekends. And then last minute, he didn't actually have to create this rule because it's the exact same rule. It's saying when a night is within the last two, like in the next two days, weekdays should be two, and weekends should be three, which is the exact same thing as here.
[00:20:54] So it's, it's not going to do anything. Most of the times what we generally recommend and actually let, let's, let's see what we're recommending. This will be fun. Uh, So what we actually seems to seem to be recommending, and this is what I kind of knew about Orlando as well, Orlando is a long stay market.
[00:21:13] Like people come here with their kids to go to Disney or Universal Studios and whatnot, uh, and they stay for a long time. So like, what, what we seem to be saying is, uh, increase, bump up your me, stay, uh, too much longer. And then, Last minute. As dates get closer, that's when you want to start lowering it. Uh, so that's something to consider, like just looking at his existing bookings.
[00:21:43] Uh, let's, let's also see the portfolio analytics. Uh,
[00:21:51] Just want to see like, because on the, on the calendar I'm able to see that, so I don't know if he has blocked the calendar here or if it is booked. Uh, I, I want to see from portfolio analytics what's happening. Yeah. I'm
[00:22:01] Mark: gonna go look.
[00:22:07] So the 27th and the 28th of April. Yeah. More. I can see back on here there is a, a booking that has come.
[00:22:23] Okay. The two nights, uh, 27th and 28th of April. Yep. So that's a two night booking. Arriving on the Thursday, checking out on the Saturday, which is what what we're seeing here. Yeah. Obviously it's, and that was booked.
[00:22:44] That was booked on the 8th of March. So the 8th of March was last week. We're obviously recording it from the 13th, but yeah, so that was a perfect far out booking in it. Booked for two nights.
[00:22:56] Anurag: Yeah. So, uh, I want to show like a few different things here. One is, uh, the easiest. This is, uh, sort of almost to.
[00:23:08] Uh, no brainer to avoid. Uh, and this is one of those things where I don't know why OTAs do it the way they do it, because, uh, if you have a minimum stay of three nights here, you would think on Friday that if a booking has to go over Friday, it has to be three nights long. But that's not how. OTs work now.
[00:23:30] They used to when? Like many years back that way. Yeah. But now all they do is they check when the guest is checking in, what's the minimum state? And it's two nights. Sure. Two nights are allowed. Right. So although he has set his weekends to be three, these kinds of bookings are possible. So like the first thing I would, uh, ask him to do is include Thursday in that three night weekend book.
[00:23:56] Uh, and let me see where that setting is right here. So instead of having the weekend setting applied to only Fridays and Saturdays, I would say apply it on the Thursday as well. Mm-hmm. And that would, uh, that would. Make sure that the minimum here is three. And that way if anybody's starting a booking on Thursday, they have to book at least to Sunday, check out on Sunday.
[00:24:24] Mm-hmm. So they're, you're not spending your weekend anymore,
[00:24:26] right?
[00:24:26] Mark: Massively. Yeah. For somewhere like Hoola as well. That, that's key. Um, it was really interesting that Price Labs are saying a minimum stay of six nights. Of
[00:24:34] Anurag: six nights. Yeah. So I want to dig into that one first. I, I want to see what did. What were, what has, uh, CUNY been getting?
[00:24:45] Right. So like he has been getting, his length of stay that he's been getting has mostly been three to four nights and equal number of nights are booked with a two nights stay and, uh, five to six nights stay. And, and we are looking at total book nights that, that's important. Uh, because if you look at total number of bookings, two nights, Tower up because, uh, even though, so there, there are probably nine bookings here and there are probably three bookings here, right?
[00:25:16] Yeah. So like if you look at by number of bookings, it'll look like, yeah, I'm getting a ton of two nine bookings. But that's not necessarily the right way. Uh, you should look at, uh, by number of nights. But even the here, like the, the recommendation we had was a lot more aggressive than, than what he has been getting right now.
There could be two reasons
[00:25:33] There could be two reasons for this. One is our recomme. Are generally based on what do we see in the market. So next I'm going to pull up the, the market as well. Uh, and then two. CUNY's numbers are going to be impacted by what his settings are. So if he is allowing two and three night settings, then he will get those two and three night bookings.
[00:25:56] And as he gets those, there is now less a chance of getting this five and six night bookings. Right. So, um, if, uh, but regardless, like we are recommending six, I would, I would say, let's not jump to it. Let's, let's say, When it is more than 60 days out, let's keep it five, then make it four, and then make it three nights within, you know, uh, 30 or 40 days.
[00:26:20] Uh, don't completely depart from what you had, but make incremental changes and see if they help. Like that's generally, uh, our, our advice in anything. But
[00:26:30] Mark: can we, uh, sorry. Can we see as well from this data what his average lead time is? As in from the point of the book into the point of. Correct. So,
[00:26:41] Anurag: uh, there are some KPIs on, up, up top here, and I'm like, let's see, for from Jan all the way till March end, or let's say April end for all the bookings in that period, uh, he has 23 bookings.
[00:26:58] Uh, the average length of stay is 3.3 and average lead time is. Yeah. Uh, 22 days, right? So, uh, so that's, that's aggregate numbers. Those are helpful, but don't always paint the entire picture. There is this neat section called length of stay in booking window, which actually breaks it out. It says, what's the booking window?
[00:27:22] How many days do you get booked? How far out? And it's. 20 of your stays, uh, 20 of the nights got booked more than two to four, uh, between two to four months out 16. So like, it gives you a distribution. It generally tends to say very little stuff happens last minute and very little stuff seems to be happening very far out.
[00:27:42] You're in the right, in the middle window of like, yeah, two weeks to four months. Four months, right. Um, and, and same story. The length of stay and uh,
[00:27:52] Mark: and things like that. So with that being said, then, if we're gonna go through the rules, Price Labs have suggested we would say that anything more than 30 days, you would recommend a a minimum of a minimum of six nights, say, and then as soon as it gets to that four weeks, you're gonna then say, yeah, four nights
[00:28:13] Anurag: it, I think it had three nights or
[00:28:15] Mark: something like that.
[00:28:15] Yeah. Then so eventually when we get into, when we get into that, uh, stay restrictions, um, yeah, so basically anything more, Far out. So anything more than 90 nights, seven nights, anything last minute, and we're including last minute within 29 nights, it then drops down to, uh, drops, down to, to free. And we're sort of saying that the Thursday, I think we should, I think I would definitely recommend to him to go for this, like suggest this and then make sure his Thursday is classed as a weekend.
[00:28:46] Anurag: Yeah. I would want to, uh, say start a, like we look at the market data that's suggesting this, but uh, like other things, it's, it's not always like, okay to just go make an extreme change because of this. I would say, Go with four nights, uh, and, and three nights on the weekdays. Like, make that incremental change rather than sort of a, of a big change.
[00:29:11] And then see what that helps with, right? Yeah. Um, I, yeah, that would generally be my, uh, recommendation. Yes. Now looking at market data, I did see if he had created a market dashboard already or not. He has one credit left. I will let him create this month. Uh, I pulled out. Another market for the same area.
[00:29:33] And I was looking at sort of the similar data for the entire region. And I've, did I filter out? No, I, I think he's, let's, let's stick to four to seven bedroom, uh, homes to, to stay comparable to what he has. Want to get a sense of like those two things, like the lead time and the length of stay. Like are they wildly different?
[00:30:03] Are they a little different? Like what are they cool in terms of booking window? Uh, I think he's getting bookings right where these numbers are pretty much zero for him. Uh, the market does have a little bit there, but, but the meat of it is in the same window that, that he's getting. So, so, so that's, that's fine.
[00:30:24] Um, This, I did know like the Orlando market gets a ton off these seven to 14, like people book a week or 10 days, uh,
[00:30:35] Mark: and then just go there. Well, it makes sense because, you know, and again, the majority, we get every single guest to fill in a a Google form. And one of the things we've implemented into the business is in the Google form, it asks, uh, you know, a couple of questions.
[00:30:49] Uh, the name obviously the. Um, but we have how many people in your pie, what was the deciding factor in why you picked Oz as your place to stay and at you celebrating a special occasion and everybody is saying. Magic Kingdom. Everybody's saying Disney Spring break, kids birthday. Birthday. And when you come to do Disney, as you know, if anybody's been to Orlando one, it's not small.
You need three days to scratch the surface
[00:31:14] You need at least three days to even scratch the surface. So for, for, for that. And then if you throw into it like universal and all the other things, you know, you, you're talking five days before you've even, you know, got a chance to do anything else. So that window bear that five to 14 days, that makes a ton of sense to me.
[00:31:35] Anurag: Yeah. So that, that might be why our recommendation was like, Hey, do six, there's plenty of six night demand that you'll fill up your calendar with that. Yeah. Uh, again, not something that like, uh, this is true with anything like even pricewise uh, regionally say, uh, if you have been running something and running it, You don't want to like jump to a completely new setting.
[00:31:58] You want to slowly get there. So like, try see if it helps or not. Yeah. Um, so, which is why I'm saying like, don't jump to six. Go to four, like, uh, make it a four night minimum outside of 30 nights, three nights within, and, and see what starts happening, right? Yeah.
[00:32:11] Mark: Yep. Um, I mean, the main thing for him, I think you hit an L on a head, make Thursday your weekend, the start of your weekend.
[00:32:16] Anurag: That's, yeah. That, that's a no-brainer. I think that
[00:32:19] Mark: that is, that's a no go anything more than 30 days out. Make it minimum stay at four nights because again, it, it, there's only one property, right? And I say this a lot when you've got one property, You and, and say that your minimum stay is seven nights.
[00:32:32] You've only got 50 bookings in a year to take, but take two weeks for making and some clean and whatnot. So you've only gotta find 50 bings. And if you are then putting everything down to free night, then you've got to find a hundred bookings because you're making your life a lot harder then. And when you get off and dates, like the sit dates that we've seen, like those ones and twosies.
[00:32:51] They're so hard to fill where you could be cheeky and you could be cute and you could be clever and you could start to message people and say, Hey, he's got the two nights, but would you like to upgrade it to four, et cetera. But at the point of booking, if you can capture those people that are looking and if, if you use the data correctly, I mean, obviously CUNY's is brand new to this.
[00:33:09] He's probably gone and put three nights day because he fought minimum free nights day. That's what everybody's. When you look behind the scenes of Price Labs and you set up the basics and then you go, uh, the next step down, which is, all right, it's amazing that we can do this now, is that you can go, oh, this is actually what the data is telling us.
[00:33:26] This is why it's telling us, and this is what everybody else is doing. So you get that extra level of, um, confidence that you can do that next step instead of just sort of plucking a, a number out of the sky and hoping for the best. Brilliant. Yeah.
[00:33:42] Anurag: Um, what else shows up?
[00:33:44] Mark: What was with the you amenities one that I saw on that chat that you were quickly, the report that you had there was something with amenities.
[00:33:51] Yeah. If you could just quickly walk us through that one. Cause I think last thing gonna be important.
[00:33:55] Anurag: Got it. So Amen's chart is essentially, uh, we show two things. One is what's common. So, uh, you'll see that a lot of numbers here are very close to a hundred percent. Like almost every home in this region has wifi like that.
[00:34:10] That's no surprise, right? Every home has tv, every home has kitchen, every home has spoon. Uh, what you'll also see is there are two numbers here. One is about supply and one is about demand. Mm-hmm. So the supply number is, it's saying 99.58% of the listings have a kitchen. Which I mean if, if it's a short term rental property.
[00:34:38] Yes. Uh, if, uh, and, and we are talking here like four to seven bedroom properties. So like there are a solid 0.4% properties that haven't listed kitchen as an amenity on Airbnb here. Uh, the second one is saying, uh, what is the demand? So it's saying 99.9% of bookings are happening on a property that has a.
[00:35:04] So those 0.4% of listings that haven't listed kitchen as an amenity are hardly getting any bookings, which is. Not a surprise, like, uh, I mean that if somebody shows up to book, the assumption would be that there's a kitchen, but, uh, if you're not listed it, they'll still want to question it. Uh, the, the useful sometimes, uh, thing to look at is desired amenities, uh, and sometimes very mundane stuff shows up here, uh, just because of how, uh, how things work.
[00:35:37] And I'll go to that. But this is a useful one that shows up here. Pack and play or a travel crib. Uh, it's saying it has a desirability score of 7.2%, which basically means maybe half the properties have it, but the number of like 50% of the properties have it. But something like 57.2% of the bookings are done on a property with a travel trip.
[00:36:06] Mm. Uh, because people are looking for it. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Uh, now I said, so this one actually seems like it, it, now that I see it, it makes sense. Like people are coming here for Disney. Uh, they, yeah, they probably have a younger sibling. Yeah. Uh, sometimes mundane stuff shows up like shampoo and cable tv, uh, which is essentially.
[00:36:30] Uh, the good properties tend to list a lot of, like a lot of things, amenities on their prop thing. And so like, yeah, that's out. People tend to book shampoo as well. Uh, but high chair, barbecue grill, uh, hot, uh, like generally speaking, it gives you a sense of like, okay, uh, uh, what could be something that I add to my property?
[00:36:52] Yeah. This doesn't mean that you go. Shampoo and start expecting a 6% bump in your workings. Uh, but this is more to like spark some,
It’s about confirming assumptions
[00:37:03] Mark: uh, it's, it's about, it's about like confirming the assumptions. Yeah. And it just makes sense. And again, if you've got more beds and you've got a large place and you near you near Disney, which is very catered towards smaller children.
[00:37:15] Yep. There's a very high chance that in that party there is going to be somebody under the age of two where a travel crib high. Makes a ton of sense. Yeah. Brilliant. Just confirms assumptions. This is fantastic. Um, we can definitely take this to, to, to CUNY and we can implement it and we'll be able to sort of see in, you know, six months time what the difference has been.
[00:37:40] Because like I say, if we can help earn 20, $30 extra on a booking, um, over a year, that makes a, a big, big, big improvement on the pnl, the profit and loss. Absolutely. Lovely. Appreciate that. So, um, we're gonna look at the base, we're gonna look at the minimum, we're gonna look at the, the next days. I'll feed this all back to cuny.
[00:38:01] We'll look to implement some, some things and we'll report back, um, after the summer.
[00:38:06] Anurag: Alright, that's super good. Thanks. Thanks Mark.
[00:38:10] Mark: Appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Having a blast. Gonna get it
[00:38:13] Anurag: on the Boostly podcast, Bruce Lee. Let Bruce Lee cuz it's so hard on the tee is loose leaf. Looking up those rhymes.
[00:38:19] Don't write it, just do it loosely.
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