Listing Sites and Dynamic Pricing

[Pengman]

In early October 23 I did a month’s trial of PriceLabs, had some excellent results with it within that month, and have now adopted it fully and been using it for a total of nearly 3 months now. However, while trying to set up my one and only listing site, Independent Cottages, for the new year, I’ve discovered that few if any listing sites allow hosts to display their price tariffs using price data pulled direct by PriceLabs. It would be very easy for them to do this - I can provide them with my PriceLabs API reference, and all they have to do is write a bit of code on their website to allow guests to search on the dates they want. But nobody seems interested in doing it - Independent Cottages certainly can’t do it. And although they say it’s on their development plan, Simply Owners don’t offer it at present. On independent Cottages I’ve had to construct 52 tariffs (1 for each week of the year) and feed each one with 7 rates, one for each day of the week, because every week is different. But of course, because PriceLabs review and update rates every 24 hours, these rates may already be out of date and will become increasingly out of date as each day passes.

In fact I’m wondering whether there’s any point in being listed by listing sites anymore. In the 2 years and 9 months I’ve been with Independent Cottages I’ve only received 8 enquiries for a total of 36 nights which has resulted in just 4 bookings for a total of 16 nights which have grossed approx £2,200 income, and I’ve paid Independant Cottages a total of £570 in fees for this privilege, which equates to a commission of 26% if you will. And Independent Cottages have virtually stood still during this time and looks exactly the same as it did when I first signed up,, and now I’m finding them unwilling to cater for the latest technology (i.e. dynamic pricing). Furthermore, they insist in requiring potential guests to leave their email address to access the hosts web site, which I view as a big impediment to receiving enquiries.

So I think the time may have come to kick listing sites into the long grass.

[newtimber]

I think there are more fundamental problems with the Independent Cottages listing site - like not listing our nearest city in a search so no-one can find us.

What listing sites may give you is a more prominent search position on google - and people may find you on an OTA then want to find your website on a listing site so that they can book direct ...

Different listing sites work for different properties and some guests who have always booking using a certain listing site, will search again on the same listing site year after year ...

[SusanMay]

The Independent Cottages listing site annoys me too, particularly the fact that the property search is based on words rather than geographical location. Other sites (Airbnb, Simplyowners) have location based searches with places coming up as you type the name in / maps / distance from location etc. It's very poor that Independent Cottages don't, particularly given the nature of the website. I asked them about this last March and they replied that they had "invested in a new specialist developer whose specific brief is to conquer the needs and wants of the IC site - he'll be with us from April and expect to see LIVE improvements from Summer 2023". Now they are saying it's been delayed.

Having said this I did get just about enough enquiries and bookings through IC last year to think that it is probably worth my while renewing in a few months, we'll see.

I haven't ventured into the world of dynamic pricing, frankly scares me a bit!

[Kilm]

Have you thought about biting the bullet and going with Cottages.com? They do full dynamic pricing that you can control the upper and lower limits for. 21% commission incl.VAT but to be honest, it's worth it for me. I get bookings from their core sites, plus Booking.com, AirBnB and loads of other places, all through their system.

[newtimber]

Apparently holidaycottages.co.uk are better to deal with than cottages.com but I've not had personal experience of either.