What does a vacation rental revenue manager do?
By Jack Murphy, Head of Revenue Management
A vacation rental revenue manager decides what every night in a portfolio should cost and what it takes to sell it: the nightly rate, the minimum stay, the floor below which a night is not sold, and the gap nights between reservations. A pricing tool moves the number. The revenue manager decides what the number should be and why, listing by listing, against the homes each listing actually competes with.
What does a revenue manager do in a week?
At UpRev, five days of work on every listing, Monday to Friday, each day on a different stretch of the calendar: the next eight weeks, the next quarter, six months out, the front weeks again, then the full year.
Pricing is never set once and left alone. A revenue manager works through your whole portfolio on a five-day cycle, so no stretch of your calendar goes a week without fresh eyes on it.
- Monday. The next eight weeks. We work the dates filling right now, so the bookings about to happen land at the right price and not a stale one.
- Tuesday. The next quarter. We set the floor on the months ahead so premium dates are never sold cheap long before they are due.
- Wednesday. Six months out. We audit the far calendar so no holiday, event or seasonal run slips past before the market wakes up to it.
- Thursday. Back to the front weeks. We read how the market moved since Monday and make the final calls on the coming weekend.
- Friday. The full year. We open and price the distant calendar to catch the early high-value bookings most managers never see coming.
What gets worked on every listing
The comparable homes
Not the whole market, which tells you nothing. The properties a guest would genuinely choose instead: same bedroom count, same sub-market, same kind of stay.
Minimum stays before price
Most lost revenue in a calendar is nights that could not be sold rather than nights sold too cheap. Minimum stays are the lever almost nobody touches, and they are usually the first thing wrong.
Floors that are still true
A floor set from your own costs, not guessed. Every listing sitting at its floor gets looked at specifically, because a floor is where a listing goes to stop earning.
Gap and orphan nights
The single nights a minimum stay has stranded between two reservations, priced and opened so they can sell.
Events and shoulders
The ninety days ahead of a marathon, a festival or a graduation are worth more than the weekend itself, and shoulder season is where a portfolio is won or lost.
Every change, live
A rate that never reached the booking site earned nothing, so every change is checked on each booking site it was meant for.
What arrives each month
Once a month, one report across the whole portfolio, showing movement against a snapshot of your own numbers frozen on day one that you keep a copy of, listing by listing, with the arithmetic shown. Underneath it, owner-facing reports under your brand, so your owners hear the story from you.
What is the 80/20 rule on Airbnb?
Also asked as: What is the 80/20 rule in Airbnb? · What is the 80/20 rule for Airbnb?
Read as revenue management, the 80/20 rule on Airbnb points at the few settings that decide most of a listing's result. Most lost revenue in a calendar is nights that could not be sold, not nights sold too cheap. So the settings that matter most are the ones that decide whether a night can be sold at all: minimum stays, floors and gap nights. Get those right before spending time on the nightly rate.
All of this can be done by the person who owns the listings, and the full course on how is free. Handing it over means a named revenue manager does it on your portfolio, five days a week, Monday to Friday, at $99 a listing with a $990 monthly minimum. Both are written up below, along with every option in the category.