Rategenie Tactics for COVID-19

[Kwesi Steele]

With the current COVID-19 pandemic, things are changing rapidly. The COVID-19 outbreak is expected to have a wide-ranging impact on tourism and travel in general. It’s important to note that the impact of COVID-19 has been quite localized as of mid-March.

So far, the rental markets impacted the most are the places with the most cases of the virus. With that said, our engineering team is continuously monitoring all the changes in your market. For now, we recommend the following Rategenie tips to help you increase the chance of getting bookings for the next few months.

Adjusting your Rental Rate settings
One way to account for this is temporarily decreasing Base rate for your rentals until the market recovers. To learn more about it, check read our help guide about Rental rate settings.

Adjust your Rates using Date Specific Rule
You would like to adjust your rates so that you can increase your chances of booking in this current crisis. We recommend that you set a lower custom rate for April,May, June through Date specific Adjustments until the situation gets back to normal. To learn more about it, check out our help guide about Date Specific Adjustment Rule.

Lower the Minimum Night stays to 1 night
Lower the minimum night stays to 1 night (if your operation setup can accommodate this). You can set the min night stay to 1 night for each day by following our help guide about Min Nights Rule.

Length of stay discounts
Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, there has been a global shift from short to long bookings. So, we are recommending to all of our property managers to consider a substantial length of stay (LOS) discounts – Both Weekly and Monthly discounts can be set on the connected channels. Please note, LOS discounts are applied on top of Rategenoie rates recommendations.

Adjust Last Min Rule and cancellation policy
To adjust for the short-term demand reduction without sacrificing future gains, we recommend reducing the “Minimum Stay for Last Minute Bookings” to “1-day minimum within the last 60 days”. For more information visit our Last Min adjustment rule guide. Additionally, relaxing the Cancellation Policy can also make the listing more attractive to a wider audience – Please note that this configuration has to be done directly in the booking channel. You can read more about Airbnb cancellation policy by clicking here.

Adjusting Special Events Rule
Although many events have been canceled due to the current crisis. In this situation, you might still want your rates to be adjusted depending on the Public holidays in your region, you can only select Public holidays as event type while selecting events for your Special Events rule. Also, you would like these public holidays to take less impact, in this case we recommend you to set impact as ‘passive’. To learn more about events, please visit our help guide about Special Events Rule.