Revenue management is a service you hire to run your rental’s pricing, so you can keep hosting without checking your rates every week. You keep your listing and your guests.
If you run Smart Pricing or PriceLabs, your rates already move every day. The harder thing to see is whether they move to the right numbers. Send us your listing for a free read.
What is short term rental revenue management?
Short term rental revenue management is an outsourced service that runs your rental’s pricing for you. A revenue manager sets your nightly rates, discounts, and minimum stays, checks them against your market and your booking pace, and adjusts them through the year so your home earns as much as it can.
It suits owners who handle their own guests and cleaning and want pricing off their plate.
How is a revenue manager different from pricing software?
Pricing software moves your rates every day using the settings you give it. A revenue manager decides what those settings should be, and keeps checking them as your market moves.
| Decision | What the software does | What a revenue manager does |
|---|---|---|
| Nightly rate | Recalculates it daily from demand and nearby bookings | Sets the base, minimum, and maximum around your real costs |
| Competing homes | Compares your rate with a broad group of nearby listings | Picks the specific homes a guest would compare with yours, and checks the total price a guest pays against them |
| Holidays and events | Raises rates on the demand it can see | Decides which weeks earn more in your market, and by how much |
| Discounts | Applies the ones you turned on | Decides which ones your home needs, and checks how they add up across booking sites |
| Booking pace | Reports it | Reads whether you’re ahead or behind, and whether to act |
A 2021 working paper by Yufeng Huang of the University of Rochester found that Airbnb hosts’ prices often don’t react to demand. It estimated that almost all of that problem goes away when the platform sets the price variation and the host decides the price levels. A study of about 131,000 Airbnb listings in 27 European countries found that hosts with more properties tended to earn more per available night, and that they made more and bigger price cuts.
Why doesn’t one pricing setup fit every home?
Because homes book on different timelines. Take one home whose guests book late and another whose guests book two months ahead. An empty calendar three weeks out is normal for the first, and a discount there can give away nights that would have sold anyway. The same empty calendar on the second home can mean the price is too high.
Guests who book far ahead can also be worth more. Airbnb’s own data scientists studied seven years of bookings in a large North American region and found that, beyond 90 days out, the share of revenue typically ran 20% to 50% above the share of nights. A discount on far-out dates can land on those guests.
The right setup depends on when your guests book, and that can change by season. A revenue manager reads that for your home every week.
How do you know if your revenue manager is doing the job?
Occupancy on its own can mislead you. Revenue per available night, or RevPAR, multiplies your occupancy by your average nightly rate. A home at 80% occupancy and $150 a night earns $120 per available night. A home at 65% and $210 earns about $137, usually with fewer turnovers.
A good monthly report shows those numbers, how far ahead guests are booking, and what changed and why. That context matters, since an empty calendar isn’t always a reason to lower your price.
How can you tell if your pricing needs help?
Any of these is a good reason to have someone look:
- Your busiest weeks sell out months ahead, at about the same rate as the rest of the season.
- Your calendar stays full, and your rent is flat against last year.
- Your rates sit at your minimum for long stretches.
- Your prices look wrong on the calendar, and you can’t tell which setting caused it.
- You don’t know how far ahead guests book in your market.
Each of these can have more than one cause, and the fix depends on how your home books.
Pricing service
Already on Smart Pricing or PriceLabs? See how your rates compare.
Send us your listing. We’ll send back a short read on where your nightly rate sits against comparable listings, how far ahead guests book in your market, two or three things costing you bookings or revenue, and a couple of quick wins. It’s free, and we don’t need a login. It comes back within a couple of business days, and it’s yours whether or not you hire us.
Review My Listing for FreeWhen does it pay to hire a revenue manager?
Owners hand off pricing for different reasons:
- You want more from your busiest weeks. Holiday and event nights are worth the most, and they’re easy to sell too cheaply.
- You have a pricing tool and aren’t sure it’s set up right for your home.
- You’d rather not check your rates every week, and you’d like someone who does.
- You want peace of mind. Someone is watching your calendar, and you can stop second-guessing every empty night.
Pricing does move results. Huang put the cost of prices that don’t react to demand at up to 15% of a host’s profit. Zhang and coauthors, writing in Marketing Science, tracked more than 9,000 properties that switched on Airbnb’s own pricing tool: nightly rates fell 5.7%, and daily revenue rose 8.6%.
Those studies measure turning a tool on, and you may already have that. A revenue manager adds judgment on top of the tool, and we can’t promise you a number. To see what it could do on your listing, start with a free pricing review.
How much does a revenue manager cost?
Hired pricing help usually takes one of two forms:
| Option | Typical cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Flat-fee pricing service | About $50 to $250 a month per listing, and some charge $350 plus an onboarding fee | Someone else runs pricing, and you keep your guests and listing |
| Full service management | 10% to 30% of revenue | Pricing, guests, cleaning, and maintenance |
Our revenue management service is $200 a month per listing, anywhere in the US, with the pricing software included. There’s no setup fee, no long-term contract, and no cut of your revenue. The software moves your rates every day, and a person checks them every week. Each month you get a report in plain English on what changed and why. You keep your Airbnb and Vrbo accounts. If you use PriceLabs today, we move your listing to our account and your subscription ends.
Frequently asked questions
What does a short term rental revenue manager do?
A revenue manager runs your rental’s pricing for you. They set your nightly rates, discounts, and minimum stays around your costs and your market’s demand, then check them regularly as bookings come in. Most use pricing software for the daily rate changes and make the decisions behind it.
Is revenue management the same as dynamic pricing?
No. Dynamic pricing software changes rates each day. A revenue manager decides how that software should behave for your home, then checks the results.
Do I need a revenue manager if I use Airbnb Smart Pricing or PriceLabs?
Those tools move your rates, and they still need someone to decide how they should behave for your home and to check the results. A revenue manager takes that on so you don’t have to.
Is a revenue manager worth it?
It depends on what you want from it. Some owners want more from their best weeks, and others want pricing off their plate. A free pricing review is an easy way to see where your rates stand before you decide.
Is a revenue manager the same as a property manager?
No. A property manager also handles guests, cleaning, and maintenance, and usually charges a percentage of revenue. A revenue manager handles pricing only, so you keep running the home.
Do I give up my Airbnb account?
No. You keep your Airbnb and Vrbo accounts, your guests, and your payouts, and we manage the pricing.