When bookings slow down, it's tempting to look straight at your nightly rate.

Maybe you're too expensive. Maybe the competition has dropped their prices. Maybe your pricing tool isn't doing what you expected.

All worth investigating, but not where I'd start.

I'd work through three areas, in order: Listing Optimisation, Hospitality, then Pricing.

Before changing what you charge, I want to understand what you're offering, how it's presented and whether guests get the experience you're promising.

1. Listing Optimisation: are you giving guests every reason to book?

Your listing is your shop window. A brilliant property still loses bookings if people can't quickly see what they're getting.

This is more than a good title and some nice photos. Airbnb has plenty of fields to complete, so I check they're filled in properly, the information is accurate and the important details are easy to find.

  • Title, description and amenities
  • Photos, their order and their captions
  • Host profile: is it complete?
  • Neighbourhood and map: is the pin accurate, and can guests see what's nearby?
  • Getting around: parking, access and check-in information
  • Calls to action: does the description help someone decide if the place suits their stay?

What a poorly optimised listing might look like: the property has everything a guest needs, but you wouldn't know it from the listing. Amenities are missing from the selected fields. Photos aren't in a useful order. Captions repeat the obvious while the details guests need (parking, sleeping arrangements, check-in) sit halfway down a dense description. The host profile is blank.

None of that means the property is bad. It means the listing isn't doing it justice. I'd fix that before touching the price.

2. Hospitality: does the experience match the listing?

Once I'm happy with how the property is presented, I move on to hospitality, and reviews are the best evidence.

I'm not only looking at the overall rating. I'm looking for patterns. What do guests keep praising? What keeps coming up as a frustration? Are the same issues appearing more than once?

I also look at the experience around the stay. Is check-in straightforward? Are the instructions clear? Do guests know where to find things? Is communication helpful without being excessive?

What poorly optimised hospitality might look like: the listing promises an easy, comfortable stay, but reviews keep mentioning confusing access instructions, missing basics or problems that weren't sorted quickly. Guests are mostly happy, but little thought has gone into what would make them want to come back.

If that's happening, making the place cheaper is not the answer. Pricing can influence whether someone books. It doesn't fix what happens when they arrive.

3. Pricing: what is the calendar telling us?

Now pricing. I look at whether rates change dynamically, how weekends compare with weekdays, what happens in peak and quiet periods, whether longer stays are encouraged, how far ahead guests book and how much of the next 30 days is still open.

When I review a portfolio from public listing pages, the patterns can differ a lot. In one snapshot of 10 live listings:

  • Prices varied by season, weekend and length of stay. In two cases, peak prices were 129% and 160% above shoulder season.
  • Two listings showed no difference between weekday and weekend rates.
  • An average of 37% of dates in the next 30 days were blocked. Two listings had 77% to 90% blocked, while the other eight ranged from 0% to 27%.
  • One premium listing showed no blocked dates at all over the next 30 days.
  • Some calendars had dates blocked as far as 10 months ahead.

Important caveat: this is one snapshot of public pages. A blocked date isn't necessarily a booking. It could be owner use, maintenance or a manual hold. I can't see confirmed reservations, occupancy, revenue or the reasons behind any pricing decision, so I wouldn't tell an operator they're doing something wrong from this alone.

But I'd have questions. Why are some calendars so much more blocked than others? Are the same weekday and weekend rates intentional? Does the premium listing's availability match what the owner expects? And what does the real booking data say next to the public view?

What poorly optimised pricing might look like: rates that don't respond to demand, minimum stays that leave awkward gaps, or a strategy that looks sophisticated but isn't reviewed against actual booking performance. None of that can be proven from a public calendar. It's what I'd investigate with the operator's real data.

Where I'd start tomorrow

Two quick checks you can do today:

  • Read your own listing as a stranger would. Can you tell within a few seconds what the place is, who it suits and how check-in works?
  • Read your last 10 or so reviews. What do guests keep mentioning, good or bad?

Then, in order: make sure the listing says clearly what you offer, check the guest experience lives up to it, and only then review pricing and booking data to see where a change is justified.

A lower price might be the right answer. I'd just want to know why before recommending it.

If you'd like a second opinion on where to start with your own listings, get in touch with Stay Advisory.