Unit 2 · Assessing Your Market · Lesson 2.9
Market dashboard policies and fees
The policies and fees section of a market dashboard compares what listings offer with what bookings in the past 30 days actually chose, across weekly and monthly discounts, cleaning fees, cancellation policies, base guest counts and extra person fees. The first three feed directly into your pricing strategy; the last two are context only, because listing configurations vary too much for the data to support decisions.
The full lesson text below is an edited transcript of the video, published 2026-08-24. The complete course is free at the playbook.
How to read these charts
Every chart in the policies and fees section of a market dashboard, the market-level view in dynamic pricing tools such as PriceLabs, works the same way: it shows the percentage of listings offering a particular setting against the percentage of bookings made in the past 30 days that chose it. Supply on one side, demand on the other. There are no settings or filters to apply, so the data has to be taken as it is presented.
Because the format never changes, the questions do not either: what range does the market offer, which option wins on both supply and demand, and is the data solid enough to act on. Two limitations run through the whole section: the booking data covers only the past 30 days, and several charts give you no reference price to anchor their percentages against. Some of these charts feed your pricing strategy directly; others, as you will see, are context at best.
Weekly and monthly discounts
The weekly discounts chart plots the share of listings offering a discount in each range, from 0% up to 46% and beyond, against the share of bookings landing in that range. In the example market, a four-bedroom island market, nearly 85% of listings offer no weekly discount at all, and most bookings are made exactly there. A few listings offer between 1% and 15%, with the 1% to 5% band punching slightly above its supply, but relative to the 85% that is noise. The reading is straightforward: this is a strong market that does not need to give discounts.
Monthly discounts get their own chart with the same layout, the same limitations and almost the same pattern. Zero is still the most offered discount in the market, although here it is not the most booked one: guests like discounts, and someone offering 36% to 40% off is actually getting booked. There is always one or two. The question both charts exist to answer is the same: does this market require a discount to convert? Where the majority offers none, you can follow suit, or offer a little to make your listing slightly more attractive. In markets where 10% and 20% discounts are everywhere, the answer changes.
Two caveats before acting on any of it. The data covers only the past 30 days, and you never see the reference point a discount is applied from, so the base price behind any percentage is unknown. Even so, guests love discounts, discounting is part of any revenue strategy, and whether a market has to discount at all is a genuinely useful signal when assessing it. Both charts earn a place in the strategy.
Cleaning fees
The cleaning fees chart shows how often different cleaning fee levels occur across listings in the market, against the bookings of the past 30 days. In the example market most listings sit in the top bracket, at $271 and above, which seems reasonable for four-bedroom homes in an island location. The same bracket also sees the most bookings, a sign the level is accepted. This market takes a lot of 7 to 14 night stays, and across a stay that long the cleaning component is a small share of the guest’s total cost.
The limitations mirror the discount charts: 30 days of data, and no visibility into how other operators account for the number, whether they are passing on their actual cost or deriving a profit from it. The operating principle survives both: keep your cleaning fee aligned with the market and it should not present an issue. Set it at double what everyone else asks and it will, especially for shorter stays, where it dominates the total price. Cleaning fees belong in the pricing strategy.
Cancellation policies
The cancellation policy chart compares how often each policy is offered by listings in the market against how often it was booked in the past 30 days. In the example market, strict is the most popular policy in terms of both supply and demand, followed by super strict 30 and super strict 60. Only a few listings offer flexible or moderate terms.
That distribution makes sense once you know how the market books. A four-bedroom island market that books out predominantly six months in advance leaves an operator exposed: lose a booking that was once committed and the night may never be booked again, because the main booking window for that date has already passed. A well-chosen cancellation policy mitigates that risk and protects revenue.
The only real limitation is the familiar 30-day window, and it matters less here, because cancellation policies tend to stay consistent over the years. They are highly relevant to revenue management and firmly part of the pricing strategy.
Base number of guests
This chart shows the distribution of base guest counts across listings and across the bookings of the past 30 days. In the example market almost every listing sleeps 8 or more, which for four-bedroom homes indicates at least two guests per bedroom. The chart does not reveal whether 8 plus means 9 or far more, so anything about the configuration behind it, sofa beds, bunk beds and so on, is an assumption.
That is exactly why this chart stays out of the pricing strategy. Every listing has its own configuration, and the counts are not genuinely comparable: if your four-bedroom listing sleeps six, it is largely irrelevant that others sleep eight or more. One side note: overcrowding a listing to lift its guest count usually comes at the compromise of the guest experience, and it is not recommended.
Extra person fees
The extra person fee chart shows how often listings charge for additional guests beyond the base count, and what the bookings of the past 30 days chose. In this example, charging no extra person fee at all is the most popular way of handling extra guests, on both the supply and the demand side. That lines up with a philosophy of pricing for maximum occupancy rather than charging per head.
Some listings do charge a fee, but the chart provides no reference price for those listings, so there is no way to judge whether the amounts are appropriate. Treat it as a ballpark view of how the market handles extra guests, nothing more: the data is not relevant or reliable enough for decision making, and it does not form part of the pricing strategy.