Booking.com Rate Intelligence 101

In the day-to-day hostel management, we are often too busy; there is so much happening that needs our attention here and now, so we get distracted from strategic activities. We end up not using tools available to us completely free, and we miss on the opportunity to significantly improve the strategic management of our hostel business. Did you promise yourself you would explore the options you have at hand? Here is one brought to all of us – hostel owners and managers – by Booking.com. Rate Intelligence is simple, intuitive, easy to use, and gives you loads of useful insights.

The summer season is slowly getting to an end, and in most cities, the number of bookings is gradually decreasing. If we want to achieve the maximum possible revenue, we need to step up our price optimization game. Rules are simple. Price is affected by supply and demand, and we need to closely monitor our competition’s moves. This is where Booking’s Rate Intelligence comes in handy. It allows us to track 5 competitors of our choice, see how they set their prices, and gives us data about the demand in our particular market.

Booking Rate Intelligence 101

STEP 1

Log into your Booking Admin panel and select Booking Suite at the far right of your menu.

Select Rate Intelligence.

STEP 2

In Rate Intelligence, in the upper menu, select on Competitors.

You can choose up to 5 competitors. Booking will offer you a list of properties, so, following your own criteria, select up to 5 hostels operating in your market.

Don’t forget to map your rooms to the rooms of the chosen competitors. Here’s how. Click on Account in the upper right corner, select Settings, then select Compare Rooms.

A table will open listing all the competitors and their rooms, as well as your rooms. Map the rooms you wish to compare with the rooms of your competition.

STEP 3

Now this is all set up, go back to the main page of the Rate Intelligence tool. You’ll see a calendar. Choose the timeframe in which you want to compare your positioning to that of your competition. Booking offers the possibility of choosing up to a year ahead.

For each day, the calendar shows your price and the average price (Mediana) for your 5 competitors. Rate differences are color coded green, yellow and red, letting you know how much your rate differed from your competition on any given day. Third, very important indicator you’ll get here is the demand in your market for the date in question.

In the Daydetails, Booking helps us by letting us know about the names of the events in our area, which could influence the demand increase. In this case, it is the International Energy Fair. This kind of information can, of course, be beneficial for our sales strategies. Making a list of events with visitors matching our property type is a great start to tailoring our promo activities targeting the right audience – those already in need for accommodation like ours.

For better visibility, we can choose a chart or a table calendar layout. Select your preferred one in the upper right corner of the calendar.

 

By default, Rate Intelligence is set up to compare your lowest rate to the lowest rated available capacities of your competition on given days. In the menu, you can also opt for comparison by room types.

 

As you’ve seen in this guide to Rate Intelligence basic functionalities, it’s all really simple. And as simple things tend to be by nature – it’s handy. The info you get will help you set the prices, rank better compared to the competition, and you’ll get a better feel for the demand in your market.

If you choose your competition carefully, taking into account the similarities of your respective offers and rooms, as well as the volume of your booking.com sales compared to your total sales, you are on the right track to getting some pretty helpful data. In conclusion, Rate Intelligence will help you in making both strategic and day to day decisions. Try it and let us know what you think.