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Why don't we start with questions?
that you guys have and then I can talk about strategy
opportunities that I see on my site.
Right now we're on yielding and I believe we're wanting to move to market pricing?
Market based pricing.
I'm trying to understand a few things.
I would like to know in the properties where we put a rate in a season and then
we put a rate, what are we doing When we send it over to Revmax, what is happening?
Like, what's the correlation to the relationship there?
What is it doing when it gets there?
If we're on yielding or market , because that's the
thing that we need to set up now.
And I don't know what it's doing now.
Can you also explain the difference between the yielding and the market?
The market, yes.
Okay.
So I'm going to answer Steve's question first, and then I will go
back and we'll look at the steps for how the pricing flow operates.
So market based pricing means that the pricing strategy for that home.
Is powered by a pricing bot and the bot is literally just going to follow the market.
So whatever the market is doing, there is an algorithm that we have built in, right?
And whatever the market's doing and considering days of week, time of year and
all of that, the bot will adjust pricing based upon occupancy in the marketplace.
And we'll position that with one base rate.
So in this case, what this is saying is under the market based pricing
tab of the unit, there is the dates.
You'll have a base price.
Now, the base price is typically a price that is generated
by historical reservations.
Since there's no history in the system, it's going to pull just an average price
relative to the location in the bedroom size or average rates in the marketplace.
It's kind of just a bot generated value.
We want to adjust this price, and this is considered to
just be a starting from rate.
If you will.
Would this be the rate that my staffer is going in that we're going
to determine where we should be?
What I would call a floor rate.
No, this is just going to be a rate that the that we're telling
the bot to reference whenever it's positioning itself in the marketplace.
. So this base price for market based pricing is just saying when we start
from these numbers, it's Right.
And then you have, if there's an event or an event adjustment, you'll see that
here, but ultimately it's going to go through its algorithm and it's going
to give you this recommended price.
And so in this case, if you were to push out these rates and publish them, this
would be the rates that you would use.
So the only thought here is this an appropriate base price?
Or actually, it would be, are these what we expect to see
as a user, an end user, right?
If the base price, or if the floor rate that we have set for this unit
is 89, then these are okay, right?
These all look fine, or fairly decent.
If we say, you know what, these one bedrooms and this tower, they go for more
than this, then we say, okay, well, let's maybe adjust the base price a little bit.
And then now my recommended price is my positioning in the marketplace now
changes to go up a little bit more, right?
So this is a lot of data tables.
You could also look at it from a graph.
So you could see, okay, this is where the current price is
based upon my current strategy.
That's the green line.
And then now with the new base price that I just entered,
it's giving me the blue line.
So in this case, if I'm trying to drive occupancy maybe I do need to use the
market based pricing and use some of this.
However, at the same time, we also have.
internally build some peaks and demands based upon seasonality that we may
want to consider and therefore come into the system here and maybe adjust
some of these events to make the output a little bit higher or to react.
So can I ask a question right there?
Is that where the seasonal pricing comes in Streamline that we're putting in?
No, that's completely independent.
This is where you're just like, Just let the bot do its thing.
So no matter what they do in season, when you hit this, it overrides
everything in streamline that you've built on seasonality it's just
saying, okay, I get it you had your other stuff, but it has nothing to
do with what we're doing right now.
We're just following the market and pricing against the
market , and everything else in the system has a zero value.
Correct.
Except for rates.
Correct.
Yes.
That's good information.
All right.
That's good information.
Sorry.
I'm..
So this is just completely independent of everything.
Just following the market.
Okay.
So you can use this.
Yes.
It is recommended to use this if we are, well, I don't know that I don't
know that I would recommend it to use it for this market only because I
think there's some better strategies that we can use to capture and stay
competitive within the marketplace.
And so Lori, one of the things that I heard Tim tell me was that you
were out shopping competitors..
So, we can do that and do that in RevMax under what we call comp
set pricing, and what this allows us to do is go and shop products.
I'm just going to do a general, you'd want to put in the house of whatever
home you were looking for, and you just put in the address I just put
in the city and the state, and what this will do is this will allow us
to see and pull from Verbo, Booking.
com, and Airbnb.
Here we have this little map, and I can drill down into the map, and I
can say I want all of the listings.
So we can get that granular and we can search specific if it's an apartment, a
house, a villa, think apartment or condos.
It's a house.
Okay.
And what size bedroom?
Three bedrooms.
And now it's going to tell me in this area right here, there's 10 homes.
or 10 three bedrooms that are listed as houses.
So in this case, here's the 10 listings and you could see who is, yeah.
Who's managing it or who's the owner.
Gotcha.
So yeah, so in this case we can select that unit and then we can call this
three bedroom Ashley if we wanted to.
And then we could save that comp set.
And then within about 24 hours, Her listing will pull into the tape
chart, and you can see what the price is for that home for the next 365.
Can we assign that particular comp to, say, three units and not everybody?
Yes, and then from there, you can, and what you'd want to do is pull that data
into the system so you can see what she's doing right for the next year, and then
we could take it to the next level and say, I want to mirror whatever she's doing
Or I want to sit maybe 10, 10 percent or whatever that strategy is, right?
I want to sit under her, right?
Maybe I want to sit under her during the week and above her on the
weekends or seasonality, whatever we.
The sky's the limit on strategy and configuring.
You could say I want to be always be five bucks cheaper than her in slow
times and the same as her during busy.
Yeah, that's exactly what we want.
That's exactly, comps is what we need.
The listing will pull in 24 hours.
. So we'll see it tomorrow, basically in RevMax.
We've got three exact properties right where she's at, right?
So, again, same question.
Do we need to put pricing and streamline in the seasons if we're doing this?
No.
Okay.
Now, let me rephrase.
So let me clarify, the market will give you 365 days worth of pricing.
So if you want pricing for next, for 2025 you're not going
to get pricing past March 1.
So if you want to have pricing in there for the summer and things like that
will default then from your season.
And then you can say, put a premium on it or whatever the case may be.
Okay, so right now it's yielding.
If we don't have something in there.
It doesn't come up.
So yielding is the one that's affected by the season pricing we put in.
Correct.
Yes.
Got it.
Okay.
Yes..
So, if we go with the comp setting that's a safety net to make sure if
somebody books way in advance that at least they get a rate that is feasible.
The comp set is saying, in this case, I want to price with specific competitors.
Yes.
So I'm going to pull in this unit and set a rule.
Anything and this is only going to be as long as they have pricing pushed
out into the marketplace, right?
So if they only list out, till March of 2025.
Then we can't pull anything for April because it has, it
isn't, it doesn't exist yet.
So the pricing within the property is going to be the
fallback if there's nothing.
Yes.
Through the comps, that's what I was asking.
Correct, yes.
So in that case, this is where the seasons would come into play.
So consider that as like, okay, this is just exactly like you
said, your fallback, right?
Your shell.
So if anything goes array or whatever the case may be, you have a good
structure when anything at the end of the day, this is your fallback
so yielding is a layer that works with comps with works
with the comp set pricing.
Works with market based pricing and works with season pricing, if you will.
Okay.
So it works with all three of those.
So, for example, like we can say, hey, this is, 2 15, but if these dates for next
year start to pick up, and right now we're looking at Ashley, and she doesn't have
pricing yet we'll still show it available, and we'll show it available for 2 15.
And then if that continues to book up in this grouping, then
we will increase the price.
That would be the rule.
So we don't sell too fast.
And so we're still protected even though we're not following the marketplace there.
So that's based on availability while comps are based on
what other people are doing.
Correct.
Yes.
If somebody's going to build in the marketplace, they're going to want to
first still build out their seasons., Put that all in place as a foundation, set
their for rates and then turn that on.
Yes, correct.
Yeah that's the way we've been moving.
. Can one property be in more than, can we have more than one comp?
Property per comp set, like have four different, we can, so we do a comp set
of compatible places in that specific area and we can put properties in
that and have several comps in there.
Yes.
So that made sense.
It made sense in my head, but it didn't want to come out.
So yes, so let's say, and I'm just going to pull up this area again, and let's just
say we wanted to look at everybody we're looking in this little pocket of area.
But let's say we wanted just everybody who was on the block or all the two and
three bedrooms that were in a specific grouping, or everybody, whatever the
logic we wanted was set here, and we say we want all of these homes, right?
And for just display purposes, I can say I want all of these guys.
Put a label to it, and then what will happen is, when we get it,
we're gonna show you the average selling price of all of these homes.
Okay.
And then from there, because that will be a very specific comp grouping,
it's all three bedrooms in this very specific location, because where market
based pricing can become not the best resource is because it goes by zip code.
So it's like, I don't need the whole beach, I just need
this condo building, right?
I just need this neighborhood.
So then at that point, I'm just going to pull product in that specific area,
and then we're going to show you the average selling price of that area,
and then from there, we can pay, we'll analyze it and then If we like what we
see or we understand what they do, and we don't like the strategy, then, we'll
adjust it or just keep it as reference.
The recommendation is to watch what they do first, and then
if we like it, then we map it.
. Would it be smart to set up a really tight area and then a second comp set
that's the whole West Beach and watch the, and watch the two and kind of see
close by and externally determine which set we need to apply to that property?
Yes.
That's kind of an ideal strategy?
Yep.
And you only have to shop it once, right?
Because then once we have the data, then we're just looking at numbers.
Yes.
And looking at availability and looking at occupancy and to take it to the
next level, you can actually create a weight and say, I want 100 percent
of my, or let's say 80 percent of my smaller group, and then consider
20 percent of the marketplace.
And so you can create different weights for your competitors.
You can create.
20 percent on the tight neighborhood and 80 percent on whole West
Beach is what you're saying.
Correct.
Yep.
We can split where the comps come from.
Yes.
Can you give an example like when that is beneficial and then conversely
when it would be problematic
So we would use that once we knew our position in the marketplace.
So for example, if we are the market leader, maybe we use the supply and
available supply as a floor, right?
Because if we know we're the premier, we don't want to ever sell below them.
So in some cases you may say, look, I know in this specific
building, I'm the market leader.
However, compared to the whole beach, maybe there's some
more luxury product over here.
I don't need to be.
So high I need to just consider the weight of the competition.
In other cases if you're using like very specific competitors like saying
I need to be I consider These five homes i'm trying to think how I
can say this with the right math.
So if I say these five homes I like what they do.
I need to price match them.
But if they're not there, how much do I want to rely on
from the marketplace, right?
Because if they're sold, I don't have a selling price anymore.
So then we have a second percent.
Okay.
Correct.
Yes.
Because The way that the system, the way that we would use this
strategy is we want to know what's available to sell in the marketplace.
So when we are promoting prices, we're competitive.
As soon as they're sold, they're not seeing their inventory anymore.
They're only seeing us.
So we don't even show the price because we need to make sure that we keep it
relevant, like there's no supply there.
So there's compression and then we can usually set the tone
of where we're going to be.
Do we have the ability to set up comps based on like Brett
Robinson Vacation right there?
Can we do it by, by the company?
So you could come in here and just specifically select those ones..
And then, and you could also filter by these two or sort filter, and then.
You can come in here and I just searched this little area, but if you want
the whole beach so if you wanted the whole beach what we would do is search
the whole beach and we're actually working on adding The owner or the pm
as a searchable filter up here So then you don't have to you don't have to
click through all of these you could just say I need in the whole beach I
want all brett robinson properties.
In the meantime if you have a if you have a square, whatever shape you want, because
this can go as custom as you choose, then apply, and then you'd have to filter.
But yes, you can.
And that's also a good point, too because You could see what
Brett Robinson does on Booking.
com versus what they do on HomeAway versus what they do on Airbnb.
Because in Streamline, you can have different prices
per channel of distribution.
So, you could have, let's say, 100 on your website, 105 to Airbnb, and 120 to Vrbo.
So, if we're wanting to really drill down and we know that Brett Robinson's our
competitor, then we would want to watch what they do on every channel as well.
And also just to understand their strategy, right?
So we know if they're going to price at 150 on Verbo and 99 on Airbnb.
We want to consider that right and be able to speak to it too because maybe
one they're hiding fees Maybe one they're it's not included or anything
can be a little bit different But then that also empowers the res team
or when phone calls are coming in to say well I found it cheaper over here.
Then you can also educate like yeah, but It's missing abc.
Well, that's the next biggest trick is the way because I understand
with some of the stuff with airbnb.
I think you've got six categories.
We've got two With streamline with rent and cleaning.
And we ended up deciding we were going to put some other fees and cleaning,
but then made us look like we were charging way more for cleaning.
Yeah.
So then we busted it back up into rent, so much per night.
And that's where, that seems to be the tricky game that a lot of them
play on Airbnb is what, because we all know that's a monster platform.
Yeah.
Especially definitely in our market.
And just how their people are able to hide and shift fees and.
We looked at one and they weren't even charging a cleaning fee.
So I don't even know how, I guess they're cleaning it themselves for
free, I guess, but I don't know.
I can't do that.
Yeah, and the other part to that too is, and this is why we want to
study them for a little bit, because Also, it could be an error, right?
Like maybe they didn't map the cleaning fee on that specific home.
Or if we find that it's a trend, then you're right.
How are they cleaning that?
Like, what are they doing?
Is it in the fine text that says there's a cleaning fee due upon arrival?
Where are they hiding it?
So, can we do comps just for our information?
So that we can look and see what's going on without having to attach
them to properties, correct?
Correct.
Yes, and that's the recommended step.
Get the data first.
Yeah, get the data first and then let's set automation to it.
Comp set pricing comp.
Set pricing.
Yes.
And we need to continue the course we were on to set up the the seasons
and the properties for a backup for what we do moving forward.
Yes, so that's all correct, except you don't have to turn yielding off.
Oh, I can leave yielding on and then do comp as well?
Yes.
Oh.
So what that means is that, so A for next year, you could always have a
premium, you'd always want your yielding on, and B, why you want yielding on,
once you get into different groupings, is to say, If we're sitting wide open
regardless of what the comps are doing, we need to take matters in our own
hands, and we still need the system to act a certain way, or pricing to act a
certain way and on the flip side of that, if we're finding compression where the
market isn't, we don't want to continue to follow them, we want to yield up.
So, we're watching our own inventory and our own tracking.
And also comparing that to the market by having both?
Yes.
Okay.
And your system can come up with a happy number in between those two?
Yes.
Yep.
And that's what we'll set up and measure as we meet every week.
And that's what we're finding that seems to be a lot of the concern of our owners.
A floor rate and a ceiling rate are guardrails of where the humans and
the systems need to stay within.
So the more floors we put in, the more restrictions we're putting on
ourselves and eliminating the ability to show up within the marketplace.
And also just work with, let's just start with simple things, right?
We can go as low as 75 and no more than 200.
In this case, that's what this option one is showing us here.
If at some point we were saying, yes, this 75 is great, maybe in the off season,
but during season, we don't want to sell less than 110, then at that point, we
would put in dates in here and say from Memorial Day and I don't even know if
that's, I think it's the 20th, but you get my drift, to September, to Labor Day.
Don't go down to 1 to 75.
Go to 109 and then
so Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night need to be cheaper.
But Thursday, Friday, Saturday, , that's what it needs to help up so we can
at least kind of correct and you can set that in your shell in Streamline.
Yeah, so always happens and always comes over to Rev Max like that.
And, or you also have the ability to just differentiate by days of week in the tape
chart and just do a bulk edit and say midweek drop 20 percent or something.
Agreed a so if this was, this is a clean, simple setup.
I probably wouldn't put a ceiling rate in only because If demand
is there, let them buy it.
Unless you're getting complaints and people aren't seeing the value of this
product at 200, then you could say, okay, put a ceiling and don't let it go above.
In that case, would you go with a comp that is like, if you have two bedrooms
that are, you think they're the same quality, you think the ours is the same
quality as these three, but nobody's booking and they're saying it's too high.
Do we just choose a different set of comps?
Those ones are available and they're not booking at whatever price they have.
I would sit 20 percent below and then just, if they wake up and they decide to
drop rate, then, you're dropping rate.
But if you're already booked.
Then it doesn't matter.
The other piece is if you are sitting at 20 percent below and you're still not
booking, it may not be a price issue.
It may be a demand issue, and then we'd have to look at marketing
and optimizing distribution.
And capturing guests, right?
So then the strategy becomes, how do I get more guests, right?
We need to get guest emails.
We need to promote our website.
We need to co op with some local areas.
We need to do pay per click, run social media ads.
Get people engaged with us.
That way we can create our own audience and then send
messages and things like that.
So on that set ceiling rate manually, then if you don't want to put the 200 cap
on it, what do you just set it at zero?
Yeah, once it's zero, it's normal.
Okay, so if you knew during the summer you couldn't go below 109 But at the
same time in this case, let's call it the shell was set at 200, , if we're noticing
that they're dropping to the bare minimum within so many days, we may have to put
in some rules to protect ourselves against them, just so we don't, follow that same,
we don't get ourselves caught, basically.
It will never go below this.
However, if they're going to 99 and we say we need to stop there, then
we need to put that layer of logic in so the system doesn't go below that.
And you can also do this by day of week.
So maybe 75 midweek, but on the weekends, we don't, we know we don't need to go
that way because we're going to sell.
We just may sell at the last minute, but regardless, maybe that floor is 99.
Okay.
And so you can just come in here and say I need it to be
99 Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
Yeah,
and what you can do is if like for example, that, hey, we know from now
until the end of time, it is nine, like our floor is different for Thursday,
Friday, Saturday, you can save this and then apply it to all your units.
So, then the shell, this shell will copy over.
So, the only thing you have to then go data entry is your value per home.
So, and then it automatically adds that line to all properties
and then go in and adjust.
Love it.
All right guys, have a good weekend.
Thank you.
You too.
We'll talk to you Monday.
Thank you everybody.
Thanks.
Bye.
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