Airbnb Aims to Make Hosting Easier, Boost Revenue with 'Smart Pricing'

Patrick Clarke
by Patrick Clarke
Last updated: 11:30 AM ET, Fri November 13, 2015

Following a big win in its hometown earlier this month, the evolution of Airbnb continues.

On Thursday, the San Francisco-based company rolled out "smart pricing," a new tool that takes into account supply and demand before automatically setting rates for hosts.

Thursday's announcement was made during an annual Airbnb Open event in Paris.

Airbnb hosts can enter the minimum and maximum price they want to charge for their listing as well as how often they want to rent out their property. From there, the smart pricing feature will automatically adjust the rates to maximize bookings as well as total revenue.

Factors that the feature takes into account include the unit's location, the time of year and events in the surrounding area.

"Airbnb sits on a lot of very rich market data: who is searching for what, for what date, what's a hot date, what attributes are important for a certain price range," Airbnb Vice President of Product Joe Zadeh told TIME. "Someone might set their rate at $200 all year round, and that's a fantastic deal in July but it's a horrible deal in November."

"It's really about maximizing the revenue," Zadeh added. "We think about our hosts as partners...and we want to make it incredibly easy to be successful."

Thursday's smart pricing launch comes six months after Airbnb unveiled pricing tips designed to help hosts manually set the best price. A June 2015 blog post revealed those hosts who followed the tips, setting their price within five percent of the company's suggested price were four times more likely to have their unit booked.


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Patrick Clarke

Patrick Clarke

Senior Editor

A Maryland native and wanderer who has lived across the U.S. from North Carolina to SoCal, Patrick Clarke graduated from Towson University with a B.S. in journalism. He previously worked for Bleacher

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