Columbia is starting to see more tourists return to its city. Last year, Columbia welcomed about 15.8 million visitors.
If you own a vacation rental in the area, you likely want to take advantage of this momentum and have appropriate vacation rental pricing.
What vacation rental pricing strategies can you use to maximize profit? This guide goes over some of the biggest factors.
Dynamic Pricing
One pricing strategy for a vacation rental that you can use is dynamic pricing. How this works is that you can charge a higher nightly rate depending on what type of demand you have with your property.
This typically involves charging less than your base rate for your low season and charging peak rates for your high season.
To determine this, you need to think about when people may be most likely to travel to your destination. One of those times of the year could be the summer season. That is because the weather is more likely to cooperate and kids will likely be out of school by then.
In 2023, about 85% of Americans reported that they had planned to travel during the summer.
However, this is not the only peak time that people may travel. You need to consider major holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas where people may want to have outings with their families.
You also need to think about how you are going to fill your vacation rental during a time of year that may have low demand. Take January for example. Not many people tend to desire general travel that time of year.
So, you may have to think about offering a discount for low season. This could be anything from 25-50% off of the base price. Essentially, you need to make it appealing enough where people may consider traveling at a different time of year to cut costs.
Once you balance these two things, you stand a better chance of filling your vacation rental property consistently.
Do Your Market Research
Along with dynamic pricing, you need a base price to center that strategy. To get this, you need to do some market research.
This market research should focus around two key factors. Figure out what neighborhoods in Columbia have the highest demand and consider how big your property is.
The more bedrooms you have, the more people can fit in your property. As a result, you could charge a higher nightly rate to accommodate those people.
Neighborhood comes into play because if you are in a desirable area where people could easily get to tourist attractions, there is going to be more demand to stay in said area. Look into if your property meets this demand.
Master Vacation Rental Pricing Strategies
Having the proper vacation rental pricing strategies in place could easily help you maximize the profit you make from these rental properties.
If you go with dynamic pricing, make sure you know when your area's peak season is and make it more enticing for people to book your property during low season. Then, do your market research to get an idea of what demand your property has.
Do you want to learn how to price your Columbia vacation rental? Message us here to get started.
