If your bookings have slowed and you set up PriceLabs by connecting your listings, keeping the default PriceLabs settings, and trusting the software to take it from there, your settings are the first place to look. A couple of those defaults give away money on bookings you would have gotten anyway, and the settings that make the biggest difference are ones most hosts have never opened. Below is the exact PriceLabs setup we use: the four settings we turn on for almost every market, the four defaults we turn off, and the one graph we need you to stop ignoring.

Quick Links

• Why Default PriceLabs Settings Cost You Bookings and Margin
• Before You Change a Single Setting
• Help Me Choose a Base Rate
• The Pricelabs Settings We Turn On
• The PriceLabs Settings We Turn Off
• The Neighborhood Data Graph Almost Nobody Opens

Why Default PriceLabs Settings Cost You Bookings and Margin

PriceLabs with no strategy behind it is the same as having no PriceLabs account at all. The software doesn’t decide your pricing strategy, it executes one, and if you’ve never questioned your PriceLabs settings, the strategy it’s running isn’t yours.

We’ve been hosting for more than a decade, and inside our coaching program, Strategic Host, we work inside our clients’ PriceLabs accounts every week. The same handful of settings shows up again and again, and getting them right gives you a calendar guests can find, a comp set you can trust, and a rate you can explain to yourself when a booking comes through.

If you’re not on PriceLabs yet, you can start your account with our link here. (This is an affiliate link, which means TFV may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.)

Before You Change a Single Setting

We see the inside of a lot of PriceLabs accounts, and the settings below are the ones we feel confident recommending across almost every market we’ve worked in. Your specific numbers are a different conversation. Your minimum stay, your far out premium, and the rates underneath them need to be dialed in for your property and your market, so treat this as the framework and expect to adjust the numbers for your own business.

And before you touch any of it, know your numbers. If you don’t have a clear read on where your business stands today, you won’t be able to tell whether a settings change helped or hurt. Know Your Numbers is where we’d start.

The PriceLabs Settings We Turn On

Help Me Choose a Base Rate

The first setting we turn on is a tool inside PriceLabs called Help Me Choose a Base Rate. A lot of hosts swirl around questioning whether the suggested base rate is right. We trust it as the starting point for the whole pricing strategy, because it reacts in real time to what’s happening in your market.

Inside this tool you choose between adjusting based on market and adjusting based on listing performance, and this is where most hosts get it wrong. We recommend adjusting based on market for almost everyone.

Adjusting based on listing performance only makes sense if you’re consistently pulling an average daily rate (ADR, the average price per booked night) well above your market. For everyone else, adjusting based on market keeps you tied to what’s happening around you instead of chasing your own past performance. That matters most if you’re underpriced, and we’re not going to lie to you, a lot of hosts are.

Minimum Stay Settings

We keep minimum stay settings as unrestrictive as possible. In our market, that means a two night minimum on weekends and a one night minimum on weekdays.

This is a visibility strategy. More open dates on your calendar means better search visibility on Airbnb, and every night you block with a restrictive minimum stay is a night a guest can’t even search and find your property.

The bigger lesson shows up in conversations we have all the time. A host tells us bookings have completely stalled and they have no idea why. Their first instinct is to blame the market, to say it must be more saturated now, or to blame a new tool like PriceLabs or their PMS (property management software) for somehow killing their bookings. Something is almost always broken on their end before it’s ever the market.

We’ve seen hosts require a three night minimum on weekends when most guests only have a two night weekend to book. We’ve seen a calendar where every single Saturday was blocked, so a guest couldn’t even attempt a weekend stay. Different mistakes, same root cause, and the same first step: if your bookings stall, check your own calendar before you blame everything around it. We go deeper on this in Optimizing Minimum Night Stays.

The Comp Set Builder

Your comp set is the group of comparable properties PriceLabs uses to show you how you stack up, and the comp set builder lets you choose them yourself. We pick seven to nine properties that are similar to ours and build them into a group.

A good comp has your bedroom count, your amenities, and your quality level. That last one gets skipped. If you’re a five star host, a 4.67 host doesn’t belong in your comp set, because that property isn’t competing for the same guest you are.

Strategy matters too. If a property in your comp set has a thirty day minimum stay, that’s a mid term rental, and it doesn’t belong in a short term rental comp set. Leave it in and you’re comparing yourself to a completely different business model and making pricing decisions on data that has nothing to do with your guest.

This is how you find out whether your instincts about your own property are accurate or you’ve just been set in your ways. If every property in your comp set runs a certain minimum stay or rate and you’re way out of line with all of them, that’s your sign something needs to change. Facts over feelings. You’re using the comp set to see where you stand, and then you decide what to do about it.

Far Out Premium

Far out premium is the setting that takes the most patience and pays off the most. We never want to be booked far out for a major date or event. We want reservations to come in once the market is at least 50% booked, because that’s when we can push our rate even higher.

Being one of the first bookings in your market for a big date is usually a sign you’re underpriced. If you were the very first reservation on the calendar for a major event, nobody had to compete for your dates yet. The patient host who can look at an open calendar three months out and not panic is the one who captures the higher rate.

Here’s what that looks like in our own hosting business. We’re in Columbus, Ohio (Go Bucks!), and the Ohio State football schedule comes out in April. Until then we don’t know which Saturdays are home games and which are away games, so we protect our calendar for every potential football weekend. Hosts who aren’t paying attention book those Saturdays early and lose money, because demand for those weekends isn’t spiking in April. It spikes much closer to the game.

We get double what the suggested rate would have been back in April, which means we’re often not sold out until a few weeks before kickoff. We get antsy watching that calendar sit open like anyone would, and we trust the data anyway. It’s been worth it every time, and the far out premium is what keeps us from leaving money on the table.

The PriceLabs Settings We Turn Off

These are the PriceLabs settings we see hosts leave on by default. Either they don’t know what the setting does, or they assume that if it came on by default, it’s probably fine.

Last Minute Discounts

If you’re in a market where guests typically book last minute anyway, an automatic last minute discount means you never find out whether that guest would have paid your full rate. You’re giving away margin on a booking you likely would have gotten regardless.

Booking Recency Factor

The booking recency factor is a newer setting that rolled out across accounts, and it gradually applies a discount the longer you go without a booking. We turn it off for most hosts because it discounts without ever asking why bookings have been slow.

If you’re in your slow season and haven’t had a booking in two weeks, that’s seasonality, and discounting for it means you’re cutting the rate on the guests you are getting for no reason. If you’re in season and bookings aren’t coming in, a small discount is a minor fix on what might be a major issue with your listing or your pricing strategy, and that issue needs to be looked at directly.

Demand Factor and Occupancy Based Adjustment

These two usually travel together, so we look at them as a pair. Both are good settings in theory, and for highly seasonal markets they make a lot of sense. If your market swings above 60% occupancy some months and drops below 35% in others, these settings help your rates adjust in real time as supply and demand shift. Leave them on.

If you’re consistently above 50% occupancy year round, they matter less for you. And if you’re an active host who is in your account regularly, adjusting your base rate weekly is a stronger move than relying on these settings to do it automatically. For the set it and forget it host, they add a layer of protection. For the host who is paying attention, you want to be making those calls yourself.

Every Default On at Once

The bigger issue we see constantly is hosts leaving every out of the box setting on at the same time. Last minute discount, booking recency factor, demand factor, and occupancy based adjustment, all stacked on top of each other, and none of it ever questioned.

When you run it that way, you get a booking, you see the rate that came through, and you have no idea where that number came from. It could have been the demand factor, the recency adjustment, or the discount kicking in. If you can’t answer that, you don’t have a pricing strategy, and if you don’t know what your strategy is, there’s no way to know whether it’s working.

The Neighborhood Data Graph Almost Nobody Opens

This last one isn’t a setting to turn off. It’s the one thing we need you to stop ignoring. Inside PriceLabs there’s a neighborhood data graph that shows exactly where your price sits compared to everyone around you, and almost nobody clicks on it.

We hear it at every bootcamp we run, from hosts who have paid for PriceLabs for years and never once opened that graph. If you’ve never looked at it, you’re very likely leaving money on the table, and it’s the fastest way to see whether your price makes sense for your market today.

Get Your PriceLabs Settings Built for Your Market

Knowing which of these PriceLabs settings apply to your property, and what numbers belong in them, is the work we do with every client inside Strategic Host. Clients are paired with a 1:1 Strategist and join weekly Pricing Clinics with our revenue manager, so the framework in this post gets set for your property, your market, and your numbers.

“I’ve got my pricing dialed in and making more than I thought was possible thanks to the SH team! I have confidence with pricelabs and market data and no longer stress about bookings.” Kristina Baumann, Strategic Host member, first-time host

Results vary by property, market, and the work the host puts in.

Once you know what every setting in your account is doing, the rate on your calendar has a reason behind it, and that’s when you can start running your pricing like a business. Join the Strategic Host waitlist here.