Customer type: Host
Property Type: Short-Term Rental
Region: North America
Products: Dynamic Pricing
Number of listings: 1-5
PMS: Airbnb
When Airbnb Ambassador Dolly Duran first started her Airbnb unit she was doing her own research with regards pricing. This was a burden, exhausting, and an unworthy effort and hours of research leading to a set fixed price.
The biggest advantages she enjoyed after implementing PriceLabs were;
- Considerably increased future bookings at a higher rate (nearly $80 more per night)
- Additional revenue of over $3000 per month with increased last-minute bookings
About Dolly Duran
A corporate professional for over 20 years, Dolly was first introduced to Airbnb & short-term rentals in 2016 when on vacation to Napa Valley with three other couples. Her friends booked an Airbnb and thanks to the Airbnb experience – of living in someone’s home, being together, cooking for each other, and sharing wine, made it one of the most memorable vacation experiences of her life.
She was so intrigued with Airbnb that she immediately went home, did some research and listed her studio in Hollywood, just to test the waters. It’s been over six years and she’s never looked back. In 2020 at the height of the pandemic she and her husband purchased a house purely to run as a short-term rental business.
When Dolly started volunteering as an Airbnb community leader in her district, she began meeting more people in the industry, and started receiving many requests to help run/co-host their short-term rentals. Last year she was promoted to being an Airbnb Host Ambassador, where she’s getting to guide more people who are getting started in the short-term rental space.
Before PriceLabs
When Dolly first started her Airbnb, she was researching pricing and doing the entire effort manually, single handedly.
Challenge 1: Pricing was exhausting and a burden
Dolly spent hours researching pricing by benchmarking her pricing against similar properties and hotels in the neighborhood. Often she felt that despite all this effort, all she had the energy for was to set a price and leave it at that. With pricing and market conditions constantly fluctuating this was not enough. All of that research she was doing to set one price, needed to be done on a daily basis, with adaptive pricing for every day, week, season or event.
Challenge 2: Leaving money on the table
She knew she was leaving money on the table, but her manual process left her so exhausted – she didn’t have the energy to again research events, like Christmas, or the high season or local events. She was aware of Airbnb’s pricing tool but she never felt she could rely on it, as price recommendations seemed skewed to guests rather than hosts.
Choosing PriceLabs
As her involvement with the short-term rental industry kept growing, and with her subsequent appointments as Airbnb Community Leader and Airbnb Superhost Ambassador the topic of pricing always came up with other hosts and those new in the business. This is when she decided to do more research. She came across several companies, PriceLabs being one of them.
“During my research, PriceLabs became the number one focus. It was a lot cleaner and you really get what the service that is provided is all about. The pricing (what a host is charged) is the best. I asked others in my community what pricing tools they used, and PriceLabs came up alot.” –
– Dolly Duran, Airbnb Superhost Ambassador.
After PriceLabs
With PriceLabs Dolly has been able to increase revenues in ways she never thought possible, and confidently recommends dynamic pricing and its benefits to her Airbnb community, clients, and co-hosts to improve their business processes, bookings, and revenues.
Increased future bookings at nearly $80 more per night
With PriceLabs’ recommendations, Dolly has been able to increase her future bookings considerably, and at a higher price. She now sees entire months booked up at a per-night price of $80 above her earlier pre-PriceLabs set per-night pricing.
Enjoyed over $3000 in additional revenues thanks to increased last minute bookings
In the past, before she started using PriceLabs, her rigid fixed price restricted the number of last-minute bookings she got. Dolly mentions how she never got a booking that was earlier than two weeks in the future. With PriceLabs data-driven AI price recommendations, she now gets at least 8 to 10 last-minute bookings per month that give her a minimum of $3000 in additional revenue
Adapt pricing taking into account market conditions
With PriceLabs Dolly has been able to increase bookings and maximize revenue through PriceLabs’ data-driven price recommendations based on fluctuating market conditions such as events, seasonality, neighborhood data, and more.
Free education and support on Dynamic Pricing
“Another thing I like about PriceLabs is the free education offered – live training sessions, pre-recorded sessions, and 1:1 support. It has helped me understand the intricacies of dynamic pricing, setting my base price, and how I can use data to my advantage. I’ve yet to learn and utilize all of PriceLabs offerings such as analytics, neighborhood data, and all of the other features but that’s next on my list.” said Dolly when pondering over the reasons she trusts PriceLabs.
Recommending PriceLabs
“I don’t need to lift a finger anymore. I set my base price and follow a ‘Set it and forget it’ approach. I know PriceLabs will do its work and get me the best prices.
When a company does its best for me as a customer, I love to tell people about it, as I wish someone had told me about PriceLabs when I first started out. Even before PriceLabs, I was very successful in the short-term rental business, but with PriceLabs I feel confident that I’m not leaving money on the table anymore.
Today, I confidently recommend PriceLabs to my community and to the Airbnb hosts to look to me to answer their questions and provide recommendations on how best to run their business”, concluded Dolly.
