
Beyond Pricing – Automatic Dynamic Pricing for Airbnb - JamminJorge
https://beyondpricing.com/
======
buro9
Surge pricing for AirBNB, and suddenly we're back to looking our networks for
floors to crash on and spare rooms to be had.

I guess the rule of thumb is that even when costs are eroded, profits
increased, intermediaries disintermediated... the prices will rise to the
maximum levels that the market will bear.

It just takes away the magic of being able to find that rare, cheap and great
place. The sharing culture is now less sharing.

~~~
rayiner
> I guess the rule of thumb is that even when costs are eroded, profits
> increased, intermediaries disintermediated... the prices will rise to the
> maximum levels that the market will bear.

Price has always been about demand versus supply, not demand versus cost.
Reducing costs in situations where supply is constrained by some other factor
will just increase profits.

~~~
_delirium
The _interesting_ part of AirBnB, though (imo, of course), has typically been
sort of a couchsurfing where you cover some of the offering party's rent in
exchange for the accommodation. That occupies a kind of awkward niche between
fully-free and fully-commercial accommodations, where there is (or was) some
kind of expectation of a relationship to cost: you don't stay free like with
Couchsurfing, but the other party isn't trying to run a profit-maximizing
hotel, either.

It's true that it's increasingly converging towards becoming a competitor to
standard vacation-rental sites like booking.com and HomeAway, though, which
come with different expectations.

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lifeisstillgood
I am looking for the right word to describe this rather unpleasant strategy
that seemed to start with YouTube and now is Über and AirBnb. AirBnB is
explicitly or implicitly encouraging people to sublet rooms in breach of their
contracts, similar to how YouTube rode on the back of old music videos.

It feels vaguely like the Pikkety rumpus - like a right wing think tank would
approve of the "destroy the red tape holdin us back" when mostly it's not red
tape, it's someone else's property.

I don't have the right words for the approach - it's hoping we get too big
before we get caught.

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pmoods
I use something similar called Smart Host
([http://www.smarthost.me](http://www.smarthost.me)). They told me they are
supporting about 10 cities right now. It’s not automatic like Beyond, but they
give me a bunch of context around their recommendation. Smart Host - The
short-term rental price expert. www.smarthost.me

~~~
clogston
Agree on Smart Host. I really like the flavor they provided about the pricing
recommendation I got from them.

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JPWhitaker
I went to a talk at AirBnB and they've already implemented and tested this
with their price suggestion. Bit scary to know your entire business hinges on
them not opening up a feature to everyone.

~~~
ianmchenry
We'll soon be cross-platform.

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zain
I've been using Beyond Pricing to set the price of my AirBnB for a few weeks
now and I'm really happy with it. My increase wasn't anything dramatic --
probably 20% or so -- but it was dead simple to set up and basically free
money.

~~~
vladgur
20% increase in income is pretty dramatic :)

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berelig
Not sure what to make of a pricing product that doesn't show its own pricing
without signing up for an account first.

~~~
ianmchenry
So sorry about that! Somehow it was hidden in the latest push - that's
important to know. It will always be free for the first 2 months to prove it
works. It's also free during beta. After that, we'll set a monthly price per
property that is incredibly, no-brainer reasonable. And we'll always let you
cancel at anytime.

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vladgur
Given that you expect people to share their AirBnB login and password, can you
specify which locations you actually support prior to us handing this
sensitive info over

~~~
zaius
Yep we need to be a bit more explicit about that. Currently we're only in SF,
but that should be changing very soon.

That said, you can preview the prices for a listing without logging in - click
the "preview your listing" button on the demo page.

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oskarth
This thread is filled with No True Scotsman (it's not _really_ a sharing
economy) and Surge Pricing pitchforks / complaining.

It's supply and demand, like any other business. Airbnb is still awesome -
it's a huge step up from hotels and hostels, and outside of the insular tech
world it's still far from established. If you think it's too expensive or
whatever just don't use it.

------
OrwellianChild
I see the value of this type of service in theory - a good anchor point on
which to set pricing for AirBNB listings is useful especially when you are
first starting up.

Unless you are hoping to run your listing hands-off and full-time (the "always
on" instant book-able listing), however, I think that out-sourcing the
_pricing_ removes the control you have over differentiating your offering.

It has been my experience that furniture staging, photography, listing
reviews/reputation, and the lister's profile all have dramatic impact on the
amount you can charge for what is otherwise a very normal apartment. In this
highly differentiated environment, it would be hard to model truly optimal
pricing.

I imagine that what Beyond, Smart Host, and the like can do first and foremost
is help you maximize _occupancy_ , which certainly has the potential to
increase your earnings if you are not a high-demand listing.

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adambenayoun

        Sorry! Pricing is not yet available in Mountain View.
    

Any plan on making this available in Mountain View?

~~~
ianmchenry
Hi Adam! Yes, we are rolling out city-by-city in order of number of listings.
Mountain View has around 400 active listings, so we should be there in the
next month or so! We use a ton of data to derive our prices, rather than
creating a generic pricing algorithm without data, so it's just a matter of
getting that together and testing in each market.

~~~
pdxandi
I think you should indicate earlier that you don't support cities before users
go through the process of creating an account only to find out they can't use
your service. I understand you want to maximize users and figure out where the
demand is the highest, but I think you should at least give users the option
to continue creating an account if their city is not currently supported.

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dyadic
I almost exclusively live in AirBnBs these days, and when I'm looking for a
new place to stay it will usually take me a few days or possibly a week to
check out what's available, message a few people and then choose the one I
want. If the prices are changing daily then that would really confuse my way
of using the site.

However, a lot of pricing on there does seems to be guesswork, wildly varying,
sometimes really cheap and sometimes really expensive. So if this helps enough
people to price their property better then that's something I can get behind.

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collkell
Great to see this on Hacker News! This has been my little secret for pricing
my AirBnb the last couple of months! Guess the secret's out now.

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dcalacci
Have you guys modeled what this would do to the airbnb economy as a function
of how many users actively use your tool?

~~~
zaius
Not yet... We don't price enough properties yet for it to make a significant
change to city wide prices, but hopefully that's a problem we have to deal
with.

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mimighost
Is this the beginning of the era of online housing bidding networks? Guess
soon we will have Airbnb exchanges...

~~~
ianmchenry
You mean like this?
[https://www.vacationfutures.com/](https://www.vacationfutures.com/)

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markdennis
I can't see airbnb being happy about this. What cut do you take?

~~~
crazypyro
Why would airbnb not be happy about this? They would really only be gaining
money as their income is proportional to the owner's income. (Else this
product doesn't help anyone, including the owner of the property)

~~~
michaelt
The same reason Craigslist didn't like Padmapper scraping all their listings:
The listings bootstrap a competitor who will later try to replace them.
Example:

1\. Get sellers used to visiting www.beyondpricing.com instead of
www.airbnb.com - you don't have any problems attracting sellers, because you
can get their listing in front of as many people as airbnb.

2\. Add some sort of multi-site listing search or something, to get buyers
also visiting you directly instead of going via airbnb. Advertise your site on
your sellers' airbnb listings.

3\. Once buyers and sellers are used to using your site instead of airbnb,
launch your own listings service and cut airbnb out all together. (Or better
yet, launch your own listings and only invite the profitable low maintenance
buyers and sellers with established histories, leaving the dregs to airbnb)

This allows you to sidestep the problem of "sellers don't want to use us as
there are no buyers, buyers don't want to use us because there are no
sellers".

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PinguTS
Back to times, where websites that could be plain simple HTML do not work. Not
working at all in Firefox 29.0.1. Just a blank page.

(Yes, I know. It works in Safari. But that is not the point.)

~~~
zaius
Apologies - I'm developing on firefox aurora and haven't had a chance to test
it on older versions yet. I honestly wasn't prepared for a HN submission but
some more cross browser testing and mobile testing are very high on my todo
list.

This is my first project where I've developed with an IE10+ only policy, which
is actually really nice because of flex box, but it's easy to accidentally
break other browsers if you miss a single prefix.

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fiatjaf
Any examples of the algorithms these kind of service uses? Or in any other
area in which automatic pricing is used.

Thank you very much.

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md2be
Can you go into your algorithm? Statistical Method?

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venutip

      We model local demand for each night by modeling hotel prices, flight data, conference attendance & more.
    

God forbid you could just set what you think is a reasonable price for your
rental, and have somebody else come along and think your price is reasonable,
too.

~~~
pbreit
Agree. I think the modeling is fine but it always seems to neglect consumer
preferences for slower moving prices.

~~~
rahimnathwani
Customer preferences for slower moving prices are just like customer
preferences for lower prices. They must be traded off against customer
preferences for availability.

If prices didn't move then the market wouldn't clear, and some capacity or
demand (at the current price) would be wasted.

~~~
pbreit
I said "slower moving" not "fixed".

~~~
rahimnathwani
You did. Perhaps my last sentence should have read:

If prices didn't move _fast enough in response to changes in demand /supply_
then the market wouldn't clear, and some capacity or demand (at the current
price) would be wasted.

