TL;DR: Revenue management means controlling not just your nightly rate, but the conditions of the booking — when prices adjust, what cancellation terms you offer, and how visible your listings are in OTA search results. Guesty Pro™ includes four built-in tools to do this: Rate strategies (automated pricing rules), rate plans (multiple price points for the same night), promotions (across OTAs like Airbnb, Booking.com, and Expedia), and coupons for direct bookings. For hosts who want machine-learning pricing, Guesty PriceOptimizer™ is available as a premium feature.
What revenue management actually means
Most hosts set a nightly rate and adjust it manually when they remember to. Maybe you bump prices for the summer, drop them in the slow season, charge more on weekends. That works — until you realize the listing down the street sold out at $280 while you sat at $180.
Revenue management flips the approach. Instead of reacting to what happened, you build rules that respond automatically to what’s happening: demand spikes, gaps in your calendar, last-minute availability, seasonal patterns.
Hotels have done this for decades. The same room shows different prices depending on the cancellation policy, the booking window, and whether you’re on mobile or desktop. That sophistication used to require a revenue manager. Now it’s built into the software.
The four tools that drive revenue
Guesty Pro™ breaks revenue management into four connected systems. Each one controls a different part of the booking equation.
1. Rate strategies: Pricing rules that run themselves
A rate strategy is a set of rules that automatically adjusts your pricing and minimum nights based on conditions you define.
You can build rules for:
- Holidays and events: Raise rates 20% for Fourth of July weekend, automatically, every year
- Seasons: Set summer pricing from June through August without touching the calendar manually
- Weekdays: Charge more Friday-Saturday, less Tuesday-Wednesday
- Gaps between reservations: When a 2-night gap appears between bookings, drop the minimum stay requirement so it can fill
- Upcoming availability: If a date is still open 7 days before check-in, trigger a price drop
- Short stays: Charge a premium for 1-night bookings to offset turnover costs
The system stacks rules intelligently. If your weekend rule and your holiday rule both apply, it uses the most restrictive rule to avoid underpricing. You set minimum and maximum rate limits so automation never prices you out of your comfort zone.
This scales to any portfolio size. For enterprise managers, it’s operational efficiency at volume. For hosts with a handful of properties, it means you’re not logging in every week to adjust calendars. Set the rules once, refine them quarterly, let the system execute
2. Rate plans: Same night, different terms
A rate plan lets you offer the same night at different price points based on booking conditions — primarily cancellation policy and meal inclusions.
The classic setup: a fully flexible rate and a non-refundable rate at 10-15% off. The guest who wants flexibility pays full price. The guest who’s certain about their dates pays less, but you get guaranteed revenue with zero cancellation risk.
You can create rate plans for specific channels. Booking.com allows up to six different cancellation policies per property. You might offer:
- Fully flexible — cancel anytime, full refund
- Moderate — cancel 15 days before check-in
- Non-refundable — no cancellation, discounted rate
Each rate plan can also include meal options if you offer breakfast or other inclusions — relevant for B&Bs.
The insight here: a non-refundable booking at $170 is often worth more than a flexible booking at $200 that cancels 30% of the time. Rate plans let guests self-select based on their risk tolerance, and you capture value either way.
3. Promotions: Visibility where guests actually search
A discount buried in your listing description doesn’t move bookings. The same discount pushed through the OTA’s promotional system — where it triggers a “deal” badge or strikethrough pricing in search results — changes your click-through rate.
Promotions push your offers directly to OTA merchandising systems. Each channel has specific promotion types:
Airbnb:
- Last-minute discounts (fill gaps at short notice)
- Early-bird discounts (reward advance bookings)
- Length-of-stay discounts (incentivize longer stays)
Booking.com:
- Last-minute, early-bird, and basic promotions
- Mobile rate (one per account) — targets guests booking on their phone, earns a search badge
Expedia:
- All of the above, plus multi-night discounts and day-of-week promotions
The mobile rate is worth attention. Over 60% of bookings on major platforms happen on mobile devices. A 10% mobile discount that earns you a badge can generate more visibility than a 15% discount with no merchandising support.
Promotions stack with your base pricing. You can set hierarchy rules — for example, a last-minute discount only applies if your rate strategy hasn’t already dropped the price below a minimum threshold.
4. Coupons: Rewards for direct bookings
Promotions run on OTAs. Coupons work on your direct booking channels — your booking website and manual reservations.
Create a code, set the discount (percentage or fixed amount), and control where and when it applies. You can limit coupons to specific listings, set minimum night requirements, cap the total number of uses, and define expiration dates.
The use cases are straightforward:
- Repeat guest incentives: Send a 10% code to guests who’ve stayed with you before, valid for their next direct booking
- Off-season fills: Create a code for your slow months and promote it through your email list or social channels
- Local partnerships: Offer a discount code through a local business or tourism board
What about dynamic pricing?
The tools above are rule-based. You define the logic, the system executes it. For hosts who want machine-learning pricing that responds to market data in real time, Guesty offers PriceOptimizer as an add-on.
PriceOptimizer analyzes demand signals — local events, competitor pricing, booking pace, seasonality — and adjusts your rates automatically. It detects events you might miss (a concert announcement, a conference, a local festival) and prices accordingly.
The key difference from external pricing tools: PriceOptimizer lives inside the same system as your calendar, so updates happen instantly. No sync lag between a third-party tool and your PMS.
PriceOptimizer is available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and most of Western Europe.
Do I need dynamic pricing with only a few properties?
Yes. Large operators have revenue managers watching market data, tracking local events, and adjusting rates daily. You’re checking your calendar when you remember to — which means you’re finding out about the sold-out weekend after it’s already gone. Dynamic pricing watches the market constantly. It catches the demand spike from a concert announcement or a conference booking wave before you even know it happened.
The built-in tools scale down cleanly. Rate strategies run automatically once configured. Rate plans require setup once, then work on every booking. Promotions take five minutes to create and run until you turn them off.
Start with one rate strategy — maybe weekend pricing and a gap-filling rule. Add a non-refundable rate plan and see what percentage of guests choose it. Run one promotion on Booking.com and track whether your search position improves.
You don’t need to use everything at once. But the hosts who treat pricing as a system — not a manual task — capture more revenue from the same inventory.
FAQs
What’s the difference between rate strategies and PriceOptimizer?
Rate strategies are rule-based. You define the logic — raise prices 15% on weekends, drop minimum nights when gaps appear, increase rates for holidays — and the system executes automatically. PriceOptimizer uses machine learning to analyze market data (competitor pricing, local events, demand patterns) and adjusts your rates dynamically.
Do promotions work on all channels?
Each channel supports different promotion types. Airbnb offers last-minute, early-bird, and length-of-stay promotions. Booking.com adds basic promotions and mobile rates. Expedia includes multi-night and day-of-week options. You can also create length-of-stay promotions for direct bookings and manual reservations. Promotions are configured per channel, so you control exactly where each offer runs.
Can I offer different cancellation policies for the same property?
Yes — that’s exactly what rate plans do. You can create multiple rate plans with different cancellation policies (fully flexible, moderate, non-refundable) and price each one accordingly. Booking.com allows up to six different cancellation policies per property. Guests see all available options and choose based on their preference, and you capture value either way.
What happens if multiple pricing rules apply to the same date?
The system handles conflicts automatically. For pricing rules, it applies the most restrictive option to avoid underpricing — so if your weekend rule says +10% and your holiday rule says +20%, you get the +20%. For minimum night rules, the system follows a priority order: upcoming availability rules first, then all other minimum night rules. You can also set minimum and maximum rate limits to keep automation within your comfort zone.
How do I fill gaps between reservations?
Two options. In rate strategies, you can create gap rules that automatically adjust minimum nights when a gap appears between bookings. If your standard minimum is three nights but a 2-night gap opens up, the system drops the minimum to two so the gap can fill. In PriceOptimizer, there’s a “maximize occupancy” setting that does this automatically based on your calendar. Either way, you stop leaving unbookable gaps on the table.
What should I set up first?
Start with one rate strategy covering your most common scenarios — weekend pricing, seasonal adjustments, and a gap-filling rule. Add a non-refundable rate plan at 10% off and see what percentage of guests choose it. Once those are running, create one promotion on your highest-traffic channel (usually Booking.com or Airbnb) and track whether your search visibility improves.
Once the fundamentals are working, consider PriceOptimizer. It layers on top of your existing setup — you keep your rate plans and promotions, but let the algorithm handle base price adjustments based on market data. Start with one or two listings in a market where demand fluctuates (urban short-term rentals are a good test case). Watch how it responds to events and booking pace for a few weeks before rolling it out across your portfolio.
Build from there based on what moves the needle.
Guesty’s talented marketing team is comprised of passionate professionals who share insightful industry knowledge and shape brand narratives. By bringing a diverse blend of expertise to the table, we are the visionary architects behind the Guesty brand and innovative campaigns that help people understand our product.
