Reputation takes a long time to build but can be broken in an instant. With the news that Liverpool will host Eurovision 2022 a number of hotels, B&Bs and Airbnbs cancelled previously booked guests so they could increase their prices. More on that here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-63192532
Travel prices naturally follow demand but to cancel pre-booked guests so you can increase the price is just asking for trouble. It’s this kind of activity that can hurt your reputation and put future guests off from booking with you. So how can you ensure your property is priced right from the beginning to take advantage of buys periods? Here are my tips to ensure you are priced correctly to avoid having to cancel and put prices up:
- Look at the local tourist board for upcoming events so you can plan ahead
- If your property is near a city centre, check out the upcoming events / exhibitions that are being held at convention centres. Tourism bureaus will also post when they’ve ‘won’ the bid for a certain event. You could even experiment with setting up Talkwalker or Google alerts for ‘event + your city/town’ or ‘conference + your city/town’
- Follow the news – when it was first announced that the UK would host Eurovision, places in the cities that made the shortlist could have pre-emptively blocked some of these dates so they could get the price right nearer the time.
- Check school holiday dates for your county (usually private schools have slightly different dates to public schools).
- If your location is near any big wedding venues that don’t have accommodation on site – can you see their bookings calendar? Most venues will show their availability so prospective brides and grooms can see what dates are left. See if certain dates are blocked out for weddings as this may mean an influx of guests needing a room for the night. You could also approach the venue to offer discounted group booking rates to get on their preferred supplier list.
- Local Facebook groups are also a good source of information if people are asking about accommodation ahead of an event they’re attending
- There are also various technology tools that help you to get pricing right. We’ll cover those in a future blog post.
But one final point, think about how you’d feel if you’d paid well over the odds for something that would normally cost 10 x less than what you paid. You’d be looking for the stay to be perfect and more likely to pick holes / complain about minor things that normally you wouldn’t bother with. Is an overly inflated price worth the risk of negative reviews?