Is anyone successfully using yield management/revenue management

[JerseyBoy]

I use ResNexus's yield management function, and have so since I switched to it.
I have it programmed to raise my rates $10 a night when I'm 60% full, and another $10 when I get down to 2 rooms, and $10 more when I'm down to one.
Two-thirds of my rooms are pet-friendly, and it also bumps those rates $10 when my pet-friendly rooms are 70% full
on the flip side of the coin, it's also programmed to drop my rates $10 when it's less than a week out and I'm less than 20% occupied.
Ive occasionally set it to bump my rate for day-of reservations, but I've turned that off for now.
One nice thing about ResNexus's reports package is that it can tell me each month how much extra money I made due to yield management. It averages $90-140 a month depending on the season.
its worth noting that I still get into the system and manually adjust rates based on reservations. I should let the system do it, but habits die hard..

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?
.

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?

No, it has no way of knowing whether a booking came through because of the lowered rate of it they would have booked anyway. It simply shows me that I generated an extra $150 of revenue through YM rates by displaying those bookings that were at a higher (or lower) rate than the initial rate because of YM.
And to answer another question, yes, I push it through to OTAs. Although right now ResNexus has a known bug that doesn't allow it to push the higher rates to MyAllocator. I've lost a few bucks to this bug and considering how much I'm bitching about it, I expect they'll have it fixed next week just to shut me up.
.

Thanks. We are in an area with a lot of hotels and while we are not exactly comparable to a hotel, for about 60% of our business we are drawing from the same pool of customers. While I'm not trying to be the least expensive option, I also don't want to be overpriced, particularly if we are seeing soft demand. It makes me wonder that if during softer prices get lowered if we would not pick up some extra bookings.
In your scenario, if demand goes up and you rent a few more rooms at $10 or $20 more and your room rate is $150 you're making and extra $30 to $60. If another week the demand is a little lower and you lower the rates $10 or $20 and get just one booking you would not have gotten otherwise then you've made another $130-$140. This is the way it's been explained to me, so I'm probing in here to see if there is any reality to this or if anyone even has a way to measure it directly or indirectly.

 

[JerseyBoy]

Our deal is we do one night stays during the summer. Only a very select few do here. Word gets around fast, who does. They have to call us for that one night stay and we put them in the room that the other one nighter has, so it frees the other rooms for the longer stays. We add $25 to the price for that one night. The guests are thrilled and we feel better about redoing it so much more often. So far we had only one person get mad about the price jump and said that she'll book it online where its cheaper. I said that it was fine if she did it that way. She called back and took the room at my price when she realized she couldn't get a one night stay online.
We don't do OTAs except for Air. They only charge us 3% and we would have gotten that charge by swiping a card. We have found that Air is sweet to us. Not many inns are on it in our area and those that are not ready to stay in someone's extra bedroom book with us. First it was just college students but now we have all ages including grandparents booking through air. We have it listed under our name instead of the inn's name so it doesn't compete online with our website for guests. I knew this is a-uh-heated topic…. but it works for us..

We use Airbnb too and I was actually surprised this past year how much business we ended up doing through them. I never thought about setting it up under our names instead of referencing the B&B. That's an interesting idea.

 

[Lee2014]

Our deal is we do one night stays during the summer. Only a very select few do here. Word gets around fast, who does. They have to call us for that one night stay and we put them in the room that the other one nighter has, so it frees the other rooms for the longer stays. We add $25 to the price for that one night. The guests are thrilled and we feel better about redoing it so much more often. So far we had only one person get mad about the price jump and said that she'll book it online where its cheaper. I said that it was fine if she did it that way. She called back and took the room at my price when she realized she couldn't get a one night stay online.
We don't do OTAs except for Air. They only charge us 3% and we would have gotten that charge by swiping a card. We have found that Air is sweet to us. Not many inns are on it in our area and those that are not ready to stay in someone's extra bedroom book with us. First it was just college students but now we have all ages including grandparents booking through air. We have it listed under our name instead of the inn's name so it doesn't compete online with our website for guests. I knew this is a-uh-heated topic…. but it works for us..

We use Airbnb too and I was actually surprised this past year how much business we ended up doing through them. I never thought about setting it up under our names instead of referencing the B&B. That's an interesting idea.
.

It was my aunt's idea since we were just going to try it out… Our inn name does crop up in reviews and its on our meet the host page.

 

[Jcam]

Our deal is we do one night stays during the summer. Only a very select few do here. Word gets around fast, who does. They have to call us for that one night stay and we put them in the room that the other one nighter has, so it frees the other rooms for the longer stays. We add $25 to the price for that one night. The guests are thrilled and we feel better about redoing it so much more often. So far we had only one person get mad about the price jump and said that she'll book it online where its cheaper. I said that it was fine if she did it that way. She called back and took the room at my price when she realized she couldn't get a one night stay online.
We don't do OTAs except for Air. They only charge us 3% and we would have gotten that charge by swiping a card. We have found that Air is sweet to us. Not many inns are on it in our area and those that are not ready to stay in someone's extra bedroom book with us. First it was just college students but now we have all ages including grandparents booking through air. We have it listed under our name instead of the inn's name so it doesn't compete online with our website for guests. I knew this is a-uh-heated topic…. but it works for us..

We use Airbnb too and I was actually surprised this past year how much business we ended up doing through them. I never thought about setting it up under our names instead of referencing the B&B. That's an interesting idea.
.

Also make sure you have a picture with your phone number on ie B&B sign - means they can call if they want to

 

[Generic]

Our deal is we do one night stays during the summer. Only a very select few do here. Word gets around fast, who does. They have to call us for that one night stay and we put them in the room that the other one nighter has, so it frees the other rooms for the longer stays. We add $25 to the price for that one night. The guests are thrilled and we feel better about redoing it so much more often. So far we had only one person get mad about the price jump and said that she'll book it online where its cheaper. I said that it was fine if she did it that way. She called back and took the room at my price when she realized she couldn't get a one night stay online.
We don't do OTAs except for Air. They only charge us 3% and we would have gotten that charge by swiping a card. We have found that Air is sweet to us. Not many inns are on it in our area and those that are not ready to stay in someone's extra bedroom book with us. First it was just college students but now we have all ages including grandparents booking through air. We have it listed under our name instead of the inn's name so it doesn't compete online with our website for guests. I knew this is a-uh-heated topic…. but it works for us..

One of the few features that I have been BEGGING John from RK to program in is a system to handle single night requests or abutting requests, as I call them.
Say you have someone booked to stay on Wednesday to Friday, there should be a way to allow Tuesday to be sold as a single night, since it won't create an empty spot. You also need to be able to have it allow the Friday night to be sold if you want to or Saturday is sold, but block it if you want the 2 night minimum to stay in place.
Another feature that would be nice would be the 2-night minimum hole. Say you have someone for Friday to Sunday, when someone tries to book Monday to Wednesday, it would not offer the room, since it would create a single night hole, if you didn't want it. The way the OTAs handle this is called Closed for Arrival. They also have Closed for Departure option. But in order to switch to CfA or CfD, RK would need to move from using tables for pricing to spreadsheet pricing. Which, if you ask me is preferable, but I just work around his table pricing.

 

[Morticia]

Our deal is we do one night stays during the summer. Only a very select few do here. Word gets around fast, who does. They have to call us for that one night stay and we put them in the room that the other one nighter has, so it frees the other rooms for the longer stays. We add $25 to the price for that one night. The guests are thrilled and we feel better about redoing it so much more often. So far we had only one person get mad about the price jump and said that she'll book it online where its cheaper. I said that it was fine if she did it that way. She called back and took the room at my price when she realized she couldn't get a one night stay online.
We don't do OTAs except for Air. They only charge us 3% and we would have gotten that charge by swiping a card. We have found that Air is sweet to us. Not many inns are on it in our area and those that are not ready to stay in someone's extra bedroom book with us. First it was just college students but now we have all ages including grandparents booking through air. We have it listed under our name instead of the inn's name so it doesn't compete online with our website for guests. I knew this is a-uh-heated topic…. but it works for us..

One of the few features that I have been BEGGING John from RK to program in is a system to handle single night requests or abutting requests, as I call them.
Say you have someone booked to stay on Wednesday to Friday, there should be a way to allow Tuesday to be sold as a single night, since it won't create an empty spot. You also need to be able to have it allow the Friday night to be sold if you want to or Saturday is sold, but block it if you want the 2 night minimum to stay in place.
Another feature that would be nice would be the 2-night minimum hole. Say you have someone for Friday to Sunday, when someone tries to book Monday to Wednesday, it would not offer the room, since it would create a single night hole, if you didn't want it. The way the OTAs handle this is called Closed for Arrival. They also have Closed for Departure option. But in order to switch to CfA or CfD, RK would need to move from using tables for pricing to spreadsheet pricing. Which, if you ask me is preferable, but I just work around his table pricing.
.

You mean do it using a rule you create? Rather than having to manually open or close a single room or night?
I don't deal with this as much because we do single nights all the time. What I'd like is to force a one nighter into that one empty room, which I do on the phone, but can't do online without making the other rooms all two nighters. Manually.

 

[Generic]

Our deal is we do one night stays during the summer. Only a very select few do here. Word gets around fast, who does. They have to call us for that one night stay and we put them in the room that the other one nighter has, so it frees the other rooms for the longer stays. We add $25 to the price for that one night. The guests are thrilled and we feel better about redoing it so much more often. So far we had only one person get mad about the price jump and said that she'll book it online where its cheaper. I said that it was fine if she did it that way. She called back and took the room at my price when she realized she couldn't get a one night stay online.
We don't do OTAs except for Air. They only charge us 3% and we would have gotten that charge by swiping a card. We have found that Air is sweet to us. Not many inns are on it in our area and those that are not ready to stay in someone's extra bedroom book with us. First it was just college students but now we have all ages including grandparents booking through air. We have it listed under our name instead of the inn's name so it doesn't compete online with our website for guests. I knew this is a-uh-heated topic…. but it works for us..

One of the few features that I have been BEGGING John from RK to program in is a system to handle single night requests or abutting requests, as I call them.
Say you have someone booked to stay on Wednesday to Friday, there should be a way to allow Tuesday to be sold as a single night, since it won't create an empty spot. You also need to be able to have it allow the Friday night to be sold if you want to or Saturday is sold, but block it if you want the 2 night minimum to stay in place.
Another feature that would be nice would be the 2-night minimum hole. Say you have someone for Friday to Sunday, when someone tries to book Monday to Wednesday, it would not offer the room, since it would create a single night hole, if you didn't want it. The way the OTAs handle this is called Closed for Arrival. They also have Closed for Departure option. But in order to switch to CfA or CfD, RK would need to move from using tables for pricing to spreadsheet pricing. Which, if you ask me is preferable, but I just work around his table pricing.
.

You mean do it using a rule you create? Rather than having to manually open or close a single room or night?
I don't deal with this as much because we do single nights all the time. What I'd like is to force a one nighter into that one empty room, which I do on the phone, but can't do online without making the other rooms all two nighters. Manually.
.

It will allow a single night in a hole. So if Tuesday and Thursday are booked, it will over-ride the Wednesday night minimum (if you set it to do it). What it won't do is let you book Wednesday night if Tuesday night is available, even though Thursday is.
https://uploadpie.com/TAlwYh <--- image
I have a 2 night minimum. It is set to override and allow Jan 12th to be booked. But I would like it to allow January 13th to be booked next to the blue square, since the reservation doesn't create a hole. But NOT allow any other Jan 13 to be booked because of the 2 night minimum.

 

[Generic]

Our deal is we do one night stays during the summer. Only a very select few do here. Word gets around fast, who does. They have to call us for that one night stay and we put them in the room that the other one nighter has, so it frees the other rooms for the longer stays. We add $25 to the price for that one night. The guests are thrilled and we feel better about redoing it so much more often. So far we had only one person get mad about the price jump and said that she'll book it online where its cheaper. I said that it was fine if she did it that way. She called back and took the room at my price when she realized she couldn't get a one night stay online.
We don't do OTAs except for Air. They only charge us 3% and we would have gotten that charge by swiping a card. We have found that Air is sweet to us. Not many inns are on it in our area and those that are not ready to stay in someone's extra bedroom book with us. First it was just college students but now we have all ages including grandparents booking through air. We have it listed under our name instead of the inn's name so it doesn't compete online with our website for guests. I knew this is a-uh-heated topic…. but it works for us..

One of the few features that I have been BEGGING John from RK to program in is a system to handle single night requests or abutting requests, as I call them.
Say you have someone booked to stay on Wednesday to Friday, there should be a way to allow Tuesday to be sold as a single night, since it won't create an empty spot. You also need to be able to have it allow the Friday night to be sold if you want to or Saturday is sold, but block it if you want the 2 night minimum to stay in place.
Another feature that would be nice would be the 2-night minimum hole. Say you have someone for Friday to Sunday, when someone tries to book Monday to Wednesday, it would not offer the room, since it would create a single night hole, if you didn't want it. The way the OTAs handle this is called Closed for Arrival. They also have Closed for Departure option. But in order to switch to CfA or CfD, RK would need to move from using tables for pricing to spreadsheet pricing. Which, if you ask me is preferable, but I just work around his table pricing.
.

You mean do it using a rule you create? Rather than having to manually open or close a single room or night?
I don't deal with this as much because we do single nights all the time. What I'd like is to force a one nighter into that one empty room, which I do on the phone, but can't do online without making the other rooms all two nighters. Manually.
.

It will allow a single night in a hole. So if Tuesday and Thursday are booked, it will over-ride the Wednesday night minimum (if you set it to do it). What it won't do is let you book Wednesday night if Tuesday night is available, even though Thursday is.

I have a 2 night minimum. It is set to override and allow Jan 12th to be booked. But I would like it to allow January 13th to be booked next to the blue square, since the reservation doesn't create a hole. But NOT allow any other Jan 13 to be booked because of the 2 night minimum.
(second attempt with image embedded)

 

[JerseyBoy]

Our deal is we do one night stays during the summer. Only a very select few do here. Word gets around fast, who does. They have to call us for that one night stay and we put them in the room that the other one nighter has, so it frees the other rooms for the longer stays. We add $25 to the price for that one night. The guests are thrilled and we feel better about redoing it so much more often. So far we had only one person get mad about the price jump and said that she'll book it online where its cheaper. I said that it was fine if she did it that way. She called back and took the room at my price when she realized she couldn't get a one night stay online.
We don't do OTAs except for Air. They only charge us 3% and we would have gotten that charge by swiping a card. We have found that Air is sweet to us. Not many inns are on it in our area and those that are not ready to stay in someone's extra bedroom book with us. First it was just college students but now we have all ages including grandparents booking through air. We have it listed under our name instead of the inn's name so it doesn't compete online with our website for guests. I knew this is a-uh-heated topic…. but it works for us..

One of the few features that I have been BEGGING John from RK to program in is a system to handle single night requests or abutting requests, as I call them.
Say you have someone booked to stay on Wednesday to Friday, there should be a way to allow Tuesday to be sold as a single night, since it won't create an empty spot. You also need to be able to have it allow the Friday night to be sold if you want to or Saturday is sold, but block it if you want the 2 night minimum to stay in place.
Another feature that would be nice would be the 2-night minimum hole. Say you have someone for Friday to Sunday, when someone tries to book Monday to Wednesday, it would not offer the room, since it would create a single night hole, if you didn't want it. The way the OTAs handle this is called Closed for Arrival. They also have Closed for Departure option. But in order to switch to CfA or CfD, RK would need to move from using tables for pricing to spreadsheet pricing. Which, if you ask me is preferable, but I just work around his table pricing.
.

You mean do it using a rule you create? Rather than having to manually open or close a single room or night?
I don't deal with this as much because we do single nights all the time. What I'd like is to force a one nighter into that one empty room, which I do on the phone, but can't do online without making the other rooms all two nighters. Manually.
.

It will allow a single night in a hole. So if Tuesday and Thursday are booked, it will over-ride the Wednesday night minimum (if you set it to do it). What it won't do is let you book Wednesday night if Tuesday night is available, even though Thursday is.

I have a 2 night minimum. It is set to override and allow Jan 12th to be booked. But I would like it to allow January 13th to be booked next to the blue square, since the reservation doesn't create a hole. But NOT allow any other Jan 13 to be booked because of the 2 night minimum.
(second attempt with image embedded)
.

Generic, there are some options where you can set allowable days to arrive and allowable days to depart as well as forcing people who book Friday to also book Saturday or vice versa. Maybe a combination of these will get you closer to what you are looking for.

 

[Lee2014]

Our deal is we do one night stays during the summer. Only a very select few do here. Word gets around fast, who does. They have to call us for that one night stay and we put them in the room that the other one nighter has, so it frees the other rooms for the longer stays. We add $25 to the price for that one night. The guests are thrilled and we feel better about redoing it so much more often. So far we had only one person get mad about the price jump and said that she'll book it online where its cheaper. I said that it was fine if she did it that way. She called back and took the room at my price when she realized she couldn't get a one night stay online.
We don't do OTAs except for Air. They only charge us 3% and we would have gotten that charge by swiping a card. We have found that Air is sweet to us. Not many inns are on it in our area and those that are not ready to stay in someone's extra bedroom book with us. First it was just college students but now we have all ages including grandparents booking through air. We have it listed under our name instead of the inn's name so it doesn't compete online with our website for guests. I knew this is a-uh-heated topic…. but it works for us..

We use Airbnb too and I was actually surprised this past year how much business we ended up doing through them. I never thought about setting it up under our names instead of referencing the B&B. That's an interesting idea.
.

Also make sure you have a picture with your phone number on ie B&B sign - means they can call if they want to
.

A bunch will search our inn name and then call us. We let them do the "Sherlock and Watson game". But that's a good idea about a picture since if you try to put any contact info it gets blocked.

 

[Lee2014]

Our deal is we do one night stays during the summer. Only a very select few do here. Word gets around fast, who does. They have to call us for that one night stay and we put them in the room that the other one nighter has, so it frees the other rooms for the longer stays. We add $25 to the price for that one night. The guests are thrilled and we feel better about redoing it so much more often. So far we had only one person get mad about the price jump and said that she'll book it online where its cheaper. I said that it was fine if she did it that way. She called back and took the room at my price when she realized she couldn't get a one night stay online.
We don't do OTAs except for Air. They only charge us 3% and we would have gotten that charge by swiping a card. We have found that Air is sweet to us. Not many inns are on it in our area and those that are not ready to stay in someone's extra bedroom book with us. First it was just college students but now we have all ages including grandparents booking through air. We have it listed under our name instead of the inn's name so it doesn't compete online with our website for guests. I knew this is a-uh-heated topic…. but it works for us..

One of the few features that I have been BEGGING John from RK to program in is a system to handle single night requests or abutting requests, as I call them.
Say you have someone booked to stay on Wednesday to Friday, there should be a way to allow Tuesday to be sold as a single night, since it won't create an empty spot. You also need to be able to have it allow the Friday night to be sold if you want to or Saturday is sold, but block it if you want the 2 night minimum to stay in place.
Another feature that would be nice would be the 2-night minimum hole. Say you have someone for Friday to Sunday, when someone tries to book Monday to Wednesday, it would not offer the room, since it would create a single night hole, if you didn't want it. The way the OTAs handle this is called Closed for Arrival. They also have Closed for Departure option. But in order to switch to CfA or CfD, RK would need to move from using tables for pricing to spreadsheet pricing. Which, if you ask me is preferable, but I just work around his table pricing.
.

That would be great! Right now our website can only do all two nights or all one nights.

Right now we have it set to one night for the winter but two nights for the other seasons. With Air they do it by room so we have our smallest rooms available for one night and the others for two. Hey Reskey! Can you hear us?!?

 

[Morticia]

I use ResNexus's yield management function, and have so since I switched to it.
I have it programmed to raise my rates $10 a night when I'm 60% full, and another $10 when I get down to 2 rooms, and $10 more when I'm down to one.
Two-thirds of my rooms are pet-friendly, and it also bumps those rates $10 when my pet-friendly rooms are 70% full
on the flip side of the coin, it's also programmed to drop my rates $10 when it's less than a week out and I'm less than 20% occupied.
Ive occasionally set it to bump my rate for day-of reservations, but I've turned that off for now.
One nice thing about ResNexus's reports package is that it can tell me each month how much extra money I made due to yield management. It averages $90-140 a month depending on the season.
its worth noting that I still get into the system and manually adjust rates based on reservations. I should let the system do it, but habits die hard..

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?
.

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?

No, it has no way of knowing whether a booking came through because of the lowered rate of it they would have booked anyway. It simply shows me that I generated an extra $150 of revenue through YM rates by displaying those bookings that were at a higher (or lower) rate than the initial rate because of YM.
And to answer another question, yes, I push it through to OTAs. Although right now ResNexus has a known bug that doesn't allow it to push the higher rates to MyAllocator. I've lost a few bucks to this bug and considering how much I'm bitching about it, I expect they'll have it fixed next week just to shut me up.
.

Thanks. We are in an area with a lot of hotels and while we are not exactly comparable to a hotel, for about 60% of our business we are drawing from the same pool of customers. While I'm not trying to be the least expensive option, I also don't want to be overpriced, particularly if we are seeing soft demand. It makes me wonder that if during softer prices get lowered if we would not pick up some extra bookings.
In your scenario, if demand goes up and you rent a few more rooms at $10 or $20 more and your room rate is $150 you're making and extra $30 to $60. If another week the demand is a little lower and you lower the rates $10 or $20 and get just one booking you would not have gotten otherwise then you've made another $130-$140. This is the way it's been explained to me, so I'm probing in here to see if there is any reality to this or if anyone even has a way to measure it directly or indirectly.
.

What I think works is the guest seeing a discounted rate online. Thus the ability to show a price with an X thru it and a lower price in its place.
I'm not sure having the lowest price in a series of prices works for the best.
It's a combination of things:

• Showing up at the top of a search
• Having the correct price for the guest
• Having good reviews
• Having a website that makes that guest want to stay

Just having the lowest price tends to bring in guests who are only booking on price. They may not care in the least what you are offering and so may treat you and your property as the way station they think you are.
I guess the best example is to use a hotel - the place I stayed in VT at $80/night treated me like a criminal. $80 is a cheap rate for that area. Spent $80/night in NY and was treated like an honored guest. $80 in that area is pricey. I'm not sure I made a point there. ;-)
I'm the first case we booked on price and location. Cheap price, good location. The second place we like the owners - not so cheap for the area, good location.

 

[Lee2014]

I use ResNexus's yield management function, and have so since I switched to it.
I have it programmed to raise my rates $10 a night when I'm 60% full, and another $10 when I get down to 2 rooms, and $10 more when I'm down to one.
Two-thirds of my rooms are pet-friendly, and it also bumps those rates $10 when my pet-friendly rooms are 70% full
on the flip side of the coin, it's also programmed to drop my rates $10 when it's less than a week out and I'm less than 20% occupied.
Ive occasionally set it to bump my rate for day-of reservations, but I've turned that off for now.
One nice thing about ResNexus's reports package is that it can tell me each month how much extra money I made due to yield management. It averages $90-140 a month depending on the season.
its worth noting that I still get into the system and manually adjust rates based on reservations. I should let the system do it, but habits die hard..

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?
.

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?

No, it has no way of knowing whether a booking came through because of the lowered rate of it they would have booked anyway. It simply shows me that I generated an extra $150 of revenue through YM rates by displaying those bookings that were at a higher (or lower) rate than the initial rate because of YM.
And to answer another question, yes, I push it through to OTAs. Although right now ResNexus has a known bug that doesn't allow it to push the higher rates to MyAllocator. I've lost a few bucks to this bug and considering how much I'm bitching about it, I expect they'll have it fixed next week just to shut me up.
.

Thanks. We are in an area with a lot of hotels and while we are not exactly comparable to a hotel, for about 60% of our business we are drawing from the same pool of customers. While I'm not trying to be the least expensive option, I also don't want to be overpriced, particularly if we are seeing soft demand. It makes me wonder that if during softer prices get lowered if we would not pick up some extra bookings.
In your scenario, if demand goes up and you rent a few more rooms at $10 or $20 more and your room rate is $150 you're making and extra $30 to $60. If another week the demand is a little lower and you lower the rates $10 or $20 and get just one booking you would not have gotten otherwise then you've made another $130-$140. This is the way it's been explained to me, so I'm probing in here to see if there is any reality to this or if anyone even has a way to measure it directly or indirectly.
.

What I think works is the guest seeing a discounted rate online. Thus the ability to show a price with an X thru it and a lower price in its place.
I'm not sure having the lowest price in a series of prices works for the best.
It's a combination of things:

• Showing up at the top of a search
• Having the correct price for the guest
• Having good reviews
• Having a website that makes that guest want to stay

Just having the lowest price tends to bring in guests who are only booking on price. They may not care in the least what you are offering and so may treat you and your property as the way station they think you are.
I guess the best example is to use a hotel - the place I stayed in VT at $80/night treated me like a criminal. $80 is a cheap rate for that area. Spent $80/night in NY and was treated like an honored guest. $80 in that area is pricey. I'm not sure I made a point there. ;-)
I'm the first case we booked on price and location. Cheap price, good location. The second place we like the owners - not so cheap for the area, good location.
.

Someone here once said, "You get what you charge." a spin off of the phase, "You get what you pay."

 

[Generic]

Our deal is we do one night stays during the summer. Only a very select few do here. Word gets around fast, who does. They have to call us for that one night stay and we put them in the room that the other one nighter has, so it frees the other rooms for the longer stays. We add $25 to the price for that one night. The guests are thrilled and we feel better about redoing it so much more often. So far we had only one person get mad about the price jump and said that she'll book it online where its cheaper. I said that it was fine if she did it that way. She called back and took the room at my price when she realized she couldn't get a one night stay online.
We don't do OTAs except for Air. They only charge us 3% and we would have gotten that charge by swiping a card. We have found that Air is sweet to us. Not many inns are on it in our area and those that are not ready to stay in someone's extra bedroom book with us. First it was just college students but now we have all ages including grandparents booking through air. We have it listed under our name instead of the inn's name so it doesn't compete online with our website for guests. I knew this is a-uh-heated topic…. but it works for us..

One of the few features that I have been BEGGING John from RK to program in is a system to handle single night requests or abutting requests, as I call them.
Say you have someone booked to stay on Wednesday to Friday, there should be a way to allow Tuesday to be sold as a single night, since it won't create an empty spot. You also need to be able to have it allow the Friday night to be sold if you want to or Saturday is sold, but block it if you want the 2 night minimum to stay in place.
Another feature that would be nice would be the 2-night minimum hole. Say you have someone for Friday to Sunday, when someone tries to book Monday to Wednesday, it would not offer the room, since it would create a single night hole, if you didn't want it. The way the OTAs handle this is called Closed for Arrival. They also have Closed for Departure option. But in order to switch to CfA or CfD, RK would need to move from using tables for pricing to spreadsheet pricing. Which, if you ask me is preferable, but I just work around his table pricing.
.

You mean do it using a rule you create? Rather than having to manually open or close a single room or night?
I don't deal with this as much because we do single nights all the time. What I'd like is to force a one nighter into that one empty room, which I do on the phone, but can't do online without making the other rooms all two nighters. Manually.
.

It will allow a single night in a hole. So if Tuesday and Thursday are booked, it will over-ride the Wednesday night minimum (if you set it to do it). What it won't do is let you book Wednesday night if Tuesday night is available, even though Thursday is.

I have a 2 night minimum. It is set to override and allow Jan 12th to be booked. But I would like it to allow January 13th to be booked next to the blue square, since the reservation doesn't create a hole. But NOT allow any other Jan 13 to be booked because of the 2 night minimum.
(second attempt with image embedded)
.

Generic, there are some options where you can set allowable days to arrive and allowable days to depart as well as forcing people who book Friday to also book Saturday or vice versa. Maybe a combination of these will get you closer to what you are looking for.
.

Nope. Not at all. This does. But using pricing rules rather than tables doesn't allow it.

 

[Momma Smurf]

I use ResNexus's yield management function, and have so since I switched to it.
I have it programmed to raise my rates $10 a night when I'm 60% full, and another $10 when I get down to 2 rooms, and $10 more when I'm down to one.
Two-thirds of my rooms are pet-friendly, and it also bumps those rates $10 when my pet-friendly rooms are 70% full
on the flip side of the coin, it's also programmed to drop my rates $10 when it's less than a week out and I'm less than 20% occupied.
Ive occasionally set it to bump my rate for day-of reservations, but I've turned that off for now.
One nice thing about ResNexus's reports package is that it can tell me each month how much extra money I made due to yield management. It averages $90-140 a month depending on the season.
its worth noting that I still get into the system and manually adjust rates based on reservations. I should let the system do it, but habits die hard..

on the flip side of the coin, it's also programmed to drop my rates $10 when it's less than a week out and I'm less than 20% occupied.

Yes, I have mine set to do that too. I always notice when it does it, and think, what happened! Then remember I set it to do that. It's probably cost me $30 in the months since I started using it, but when occupancy is low just a couple of days from now, I want to attract some business, and I have to think it helps.
.

That's something else I'm looking for in my quest for a new system (even tho Gomez is not sure it's worth learning something new at this point) - I want a system that shows a price reduction right on the booking page: $179 now $159.
.

RK will definitely do it AND you can customize the text that it displays: eg: Last Minute Savings!
You can also easily customize multitudes of system phrases.

 

[JerseyBoy]

I use ResNexus's yield management function, and have so since I switched to it.
I have it programmed to raise my rates $10 a night when I'm 60% full, and another $10 when I get down to 2 rooms, and $10 more when I'm down to one.
Two-thirds of my rooms are pet-friendly, and it also bumps those rates $10 when my pet-friendly rooms are 70% full
on the flip side of the coin, it's also programmed to drop my rates $10 when it's less than a week out and I'm less than 20% occupied.
Ive occasionally set it to bump my rate for day-of reservations, but I've turned that off for now.
One nice thing about ResNexus's reports package is that it can tell me each month how much extra money I made due to yield management. It averages $90-140 a month depending on the season.
its worth noting that I still get into the system and manually adjust rates based on reservations. I should let the system do it, but habits die hard..

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?
.

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?

No, it has no way of knowing whether a booking came through because of the lowered rate of it they would have booked anyway. It simply shows me that I generated an extra $150 of revenue through YM rates by displaying those bookings that were at a higher (or lower) rate than the initial rate because of YM.
And to answer another question, yes, I push it through to OTAs. Although right now ResNexus has a known bug that doesn't allow it to push the higher rates to MyAllocator. I've lost a few bucks to this bug and considering how much I'm bitching about it, I expect they'll have it fixed next week just to shut me up.
.

Thanks. We are in an area with a lot of hotels and while we are not exactly comparable to a hotel, for about 60% of our business we are drawing from the same pool of customers. While I'm not trying to be the least expensive option, I also don't want to be overpriced, particularly if we are seeing soft demand. It makes me wonder that if during softer prices get lowered if we would not pick up some extra bookings.
In your scenario, if demand goes up and you rent a few more rooms at $10 or $20 more and your room rate is $150 you're making and extra $30 to $60. If another week the demand is a little lower and you lower the rates $10 or $20 and get just one booking you would not have gotten otherwise then you've made another $130-$140. This is the way it's been explained to me, so I'm probing in here to see if there is any reality to this or if anyone even has a way to measure it directly or indirectly.
.

What I think works is the guest seeing a discounted rate online. Thus the ability to show a price with an X thru it and a lower price in its place.
I'm not sure having the lowest price in a series of prices works for the best.
It's a combination of things:

• Showing up at the top of a search
• Having the correct price for the guest
• Having good reviews
• Having a website that makes that guest want to stay

Just having the lowest price tends to bring in guests who are only booking on price. They may not care in the least what you are offering and so may treat you and your property as the way station they think you are.
I guess the best example is to use a hotel - the place I stayed in VT at $80/night treated me like a criminal. $80 is a cheap rate for that area. Spent $80/night in NY and was treated like an honored guest. $80 in that area is pricey. I'm not sure I made a point there. ;-)
I'm the first case we booked on price and location. Cheap price, good location. The second place we like the owners - not so cheap for the area, good location.
.

Someone here once said, "You get what you charge." a spin off of the phase, "You get what you pay."
.

Great points. In all of this I am not suggesting to charge the lowest price, but I'm also not suggesting to charge the highest price unless it is somehow warranted because you have some kind of special amenity which has perceived value to the potential customers which they are willing to pay a little more for. In my case if I am surrounded by a bunch of hotels, ranging from basic level economy motels, up through 5 star resorts, we will severely limit our potential customers if we do not monitor the price points of these various properties and try to keep our rates in the average of the mid level to upper level (3 -4 star) properties. Probably about 50% of our customer base will stay with us without even looking around much. These are regular and repeat customers who we give some preferential pricing to just out of loyalty. The other 50% are shopping around and those are the ones I'm trying to attract. They are the ones who may not know the difference between a B&B and a hotel or may not really care. Using yield management and pricing strategies I guess is what I'm trying to do or think about in order to better capture new customers in this space. Sure I wish 100% of my customer base fell into the first category, but for where I am that's not realistic so there is a degree of constant competition with the surrounding hotels.
To Duff's point even when the surrounding hotels lower their prices we will not go below a certain level because we do not want to "get what we charge for" at the lower end of the spectrum.

 

[Lee2014]

I use ResNexus's yield management function, and have so since I switched to it.
I have it programmed to raise my rates $10 a night when I'm 60% full, and another $10 when I get down to 2 rooms, and $10 more when I'm down to one.
Two-thirds of my rooms are pet-friendly, and it also bumps those rates $10 when my pet-friendly rooms are 70% full
on the flip side of the coin, it's also programmed to drop my rates $10 when it's less than a week out and I'm less than 20% occupied.
Ive occasionally set it to bump my rate for day-of reservations, but I've turned that off for now.
One nice thing about ResNexus's reports package is that it can tell me each month how much extra money I made due to yield management. It averages $90-140 a month depending on the season.
its worth noting that I still get into the system and manually adjust rates based on reservations. I should let the system do it, but habits die hard..

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?
.

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?

No, it has no way of knowing whether a booking came through because of the lowered rate of it they would have booked anyway. It simply shows me that I generated an extra $150 of revenue through YM rates by displaying those bookings that were at a higher (or lower) rate than the initial rate because of YM.
And to answer another question, yes, I push it through to OTAs. Although right now ResNexus has a known bug that doesn't allow it to push the higher rates to MyAllocator. I've lost a few bucks to this bug and considering how much I'm bitching about it, I expect they'll have it fixed next week just to shut me up.
.

Thanks. We are in an area with a lot of hotels and while we are not exactly comparable to a hotel, for about 60% of our business we are drawing from the same pool of customers. While I'm not trying to be the least expensive option, I also don't want to be overpriced, particularly if we are seeing soft demand. It makes me wonder that if during softer prices get lowered if we would not pick up some extra bookings.
In your scenario, if demand goes up and you rent a few more rooms at $10 or $20 more and your room rate is $150 you're making and extra $30 to $60. If another week the demand is a little lower and you lower the rates $10 or $20 and get just one booking you would not have gotten otherwise then you've made another $130-$140. This is the way it's been explained to me, so I'm probing in here to see if there is any reality to this or if anyone even has a way to measure it directly or indirectly.
.

What I think works is the guest seeing a discounted rate online. Thus the ability to show a price with an X thru it and a lower price in its place.
I'm not sure having the lowest price in a series of prices works for the best.
It's a combination of things:

• Showing up at the top of a search
• Having the correct price for the guest
• Having good reviews
• Having a website that makes that guest want to stay

Just having the lowest price tends to bring in guests who are only booking on price. They may not care in the least what you are offering and so may treat you and your property as the way station they think you are.
I guess the best example is to use a hotel - the place I stayed in VT at $80/night treated me like a criminal. $80 is a cheap rate for that area. Spent $80/night in NY and was treated like an honored guest. $80 in that area is pricey. I'm not sure I made a point there. ;-)
I'm the first case we booked on price and location. Cheap price, good location. The second place we like the owners - not so cheap for the area, good location.
.

Someone here once said, "You get what you charge." a spin off of the phase, "You get what you pay."
.

Great points. In all of this I am not suggesting to charge the lowest price, but I'm also not suggesting to charge the highest price unless it is somehow warranted because you have some kind of special amenity which has perceived value to the potential customers which they are willing to pay a little more for. In my case if I am surrounded by a bunch of hotels, ranging from basic level economy motels, up through 5 star resorts, we will severely limit our potential customers if we do not monitor the price points of these various properties and try to keep our rates in the average of the mid level to upper level (3 -4 star) properties. Probably about 50% of our customer base will stay with us without even looking around much. These are regular and repeat customers who we give some preferential pricing to just out of loyalty. The other 50% are shopping around and those are the ones I'm trying to attract. They are the ones who may not know the difference between a B&B and a hotel or may not really care. Using yield management and pricing strategies I guess is what I'm trying to do or think about in order to better capture new customers in this space. Sure I wish 100% of my customer base fell into the first category, but for where I am that's not realistic so there is a degree of constant competition with the surrounding hotels.
To Duff's point even when the surrounding hotels lower their prices we will not go below a certain level because we do not want to "get what we charge for" at the lower end of the spectrum.
.

What is bad here is the hotels bottom out with the price in the winter to get guests to come to them. We can't do that! So the B&Bs end up being the highest price in winter.

 

[Jcam]

I use ResNexus's yield management function, and have so since I switched to it.
I have it programmed to raise my rates $10 a night when I'm 60% full, and another $10 when I get down to 2 rooms, and $10 more when I'm down to one.
Two-thirds of my rooms are pet-friendly, and it also bumps those rates $10 when my pet-friendly rooms are 70% full
on the flip side of the coin, it's also programmed to drop my rates $10 when it's less than a week out and I'm less than 20% occupied.
Ive occasionally set it to bump my rate for day-of reservations, but I've turned that off for now.
One nice thing about ResNexus's reports package is that it can tell me each month how much extra money I made due to yield management. It averages $90-140 a month depending on the season.
its worth noting that I still get into the system and manually adjust rates based on reservations. I should let the system do it, but habits die hard..

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?
.

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?

No, it has no way of knowing whether a booking came through because of the lowered rate of it they would have booked anyway. It simply shows me that I generated an extra $150 of revenue through YM rates by displaying those bookings that were at a higher (or lower) rate than the initial rate because of YM.
And to answer another question, yes, I push it through to OTAs. Although right now ResNexus has a known bug that doesn't allow it to push the higher rates to MyAllocator. I've lost a few bucks to this bug and considering how much I'm bitching about it, I expect they'll have it fixed next week just to shut me up.
.

Thanks. We are in an area with a lot of hotels and while we are not exactly comparable to a hotel, for about 60% of our business we are drawing from the same pool of customers. While I'm not trying to be the least expensive option, I also don't want to be overpriced, particularly if we are seeing soft demand. It makes me wonder that if during softer prices get lowered if we would not pick up some extra bookings.
In your scenario, if demand goes up and you rent a few more rooms at $10 or $20 more and your room rate is $150 you're making and extra $30 to $60. If another week the demand is a little lower and you lower the rates $10 or $20 and get just one booking you would not have gotten otherwise then you've made another $130-$140. This is the way it's been explained to me, so I'm probing in here to see if there is any reality to this or if anyone even has a way to measure it directly or indirectly.
.

What I think works is the guest seeing a discounted rate online. Thus the ability to show a price with an X thru it and a lower price in its place.
I'm not sure having the lowest price in a series of prices works for the best.
It's a combination of things:

• Showing up at the top of a search
• Having the correct price for the guest
• Having good reviews
• Having a website that makes that guest want to stay

Just having the lowest price tends to bring in guests who are only booking on price. They may not care in the least what you are offering and so may treat you and your property as the way station they think you are.
I guess the best example is to use a hotel - the place I stayed in VT at $80/night treated me like a criminal. $80 is a cheap rate for that area. Spent $80/night in NY and was treated like an honored guest. $80 in that area is pricey. I'm not sure I made a point there. ;-)
I'm the first case we booked on price and location. Cheap price, good location. The second place we like the owners - not so cheap for the area, good location.
.

Someone here once said, "You get what you charge." a spin off of the phase, "You get what you pay."
.

Great points. In all of this I am not suggesting to charge the lowest price, but I'm also not suggesting to charge the highest price unless it is somehow warranted because you have some kind of special amenity which has perceived value to the potential customers which they are willing to pay a little more for. In my case if I am surrounded by a bunch of hotels, ranging from basic level economy motels, up through 5 star resorts, we will severely limit our potential customers if we do not monitor the price points of these various properties and try to keep our rates in the average of the mid level to upper level (3 -4 star) properties. Probably about 50% of our customer base will stay with us without even looking around much. These are regular and repeat customers who we give some preferential pricing to just out of loyalty. The other 50% are shopping around and those are the ones I'm trying to attract. They are the ones who may not know the difference between a B&B and a hotel or may not really care. Using yield management and pricing strategies I guess is what I'm trying to do or think about in order to better capture new customers in this space. Sure I wish 100% of my customer base fell into the first category, but for where I am that's not realistic so there is a degree of constant competition with the surrounding hotels.
To Duff's point even when the surrounding hotels lower their prices we will not go below a certain level because we do not want to "get what we charge for" at the lower end of the spectrum.
.

What is bad here is the hotels bottom out with the price in the winter to get guests to come to them. We can't do that! So the B&Bs end up being the highest price in winter.
.

we have this with the hotel up the road - dirt cheap and all the group / on type sites to keep staff in work and hopefully lure them into the restaurant - but with them its all extras ie parking £6, breakfast £15 and so on so is not nearly as cheap as it seems!

 

[Lee2014]

I use ResNexus's yield management function, and have so since I switched to it.
I have it programmed to raise my rates $10 a night when I'm 60% full, and another $10 when I get down to 2 rooms, and $10 more when I'm down to one.
Two-thirds of my rooms are pet-friendly, and it also bumps those rates $10 when my pet-friendly rooms are 70% full
on the flip side of the coin, it's also programmed to drop my rates $10 when it's less than a week out and I'm less than 20% occupied.
Ive occasionally set it to bump my rate for day-of reservations, but I've turned that off for now.
One nice thing about ResNexus's reports package is that it can tell me each month how much extra money I made due to yield management. It averages $90-140 a month depending on the season.
its worth noting that I still get into the system and manually adjust rates based on reservations. I should let the system do it, but habits die hard..

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?
.

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?

No, it has no way of knowing whether a booking came through because of the lowered rate of it they would have booked anyway. It simply shows me that I generated an extra $150 of revenue through YM rates by displaying those bookings that were at a higher (or lower) rate than the initial rate because of YM.
And to answer another question, yes, I push it through to OTAs. Although right now ResNexus has a known bug that doesn't allow it to push the higher rates to MyAllocator. I've lost a few bucks to this bug and considering how much I'm bitching about it, I expect they'll have it fixed next week just to shut me up.
.

Thanks. We are in an area with a lot of hotels and while we are not exactly comparable to a hotel, for about 60% of our business we are drawing from the same pool of customers. While I'm not trying to be the least expensive option, I also don't want to be overpriced, particularly if we are seeing soft demand. It makes me wonder that if during softer prices get lowered if we would not pick up some extra bookings.
In your scenario, if demand goes up and you rent a few more rooms at $10 or $20 more and your room rate is $150 you're making and extra $30 to $60. If another week the demand is a little lower and you lower the rates $10 or $20 and get just one booking you would not have gotten otherwise then you've made another $130-$140. This is the way it's been explained to me, so I'm probing in here to see if there is any reality to this or if anyone even has a way to measure it directly or indirectly.
.

What I think works is the guest seeing a discounted rate online. Thus the ability to show a price with an X thru it and a lower price in its place.
I'm not sure having the lowest price in a series of prices works for the best.
It's a combination of things:

• Showing up at the top of a search
• Having the correct price for the guest
• Having good reviews
• Having a website that makes that guest want to stay

Just having the lowest price tends to bring in guests who are only booking on price. They may not care in the least what you are offering and so may treat you and your property as the way station they think you are.
I guess the best example is to use a hotel - the place I stayed in VT at $80/night treated me like a criminal. $80 is a cheap rate for that area. Spent $80/night in NY and was treated like an honored guest. $80 in that area is pricey. I'm not sure I made a point there. ;-)
I'm the first case we booked on price and location. Cheap price, good location. The second place we like the owners - not so cheap for the area, good location.
.

Someone here once said, "You get what you charge." a spin off of the phase, "You get what you pay."
.

Great points. In all of this I am not suggesting to charge the lowest price, but I'm also not suggesting to charge the highest price unless it is somehow warranted because you have some kind of special amenity which has perceived value to the potential customers which they are willing to pay a little more for. In my case if I am surrounded by a bunch of hotels, ranging from basic level economy motels, up through 5 star resorts, we will severely limit our potential customers if we do not monitor the price points of these various properties and try to keep our rates in the average of the mid level to upper level (3 -4 star) properties. Probably about 50% of our customer base will stay with us without even looking around much. These are regular and repeat customers who we give some preferential pricing to just out of loyalty. The other 50% are shopping around and those are the ones I'm trying to attract. They are the ones who may not know the difference between a B&B and a hotel or may not really care. Using yield management and pricing strategies I guess is what I'm trying to do or think about in order to better capture new customers in this space. Sure I wish 100% of my customer base fell into the first category, but for where I am that's not realistic so there is a degree of constant competition with the surrounding hotels.
To Duff's point even when the surrounding hotels lower their prices we will not go below a certain level because we do not want to "get what we charge for" at the lower end of the spectrum.
.

What is bad here is the hotels bottom out with the price in the winter to get guests to come to them. We can't do that! So the B&Bs end up being the highest price in winter.
.

we have this with the hotel up the road - dirt cheap and all the group / on type sites to keep staff in work and hopefully lure them into the restaurant - but with them its all extras ie parking £6, breakfast £15 and so on so is not nearly as cheap as it seems!
.

I know… Even the OTA are putting disclaimers on the bottom about price may not include everything etc.

 

[Morticia]

I use ResNexus's yield management function, and have so since I switched to it.
I have it programmed to raise my rates $10 a night when I'm 60% full, and another $10 when I get down to 2 rooms, and $10 more when I'm down to one.
Two-thirds of my rooms are pet-friendly, and it also bumps those rates $10 when my pet-friendly rooms are 70% full
on the flip side of the coin, it's also programmed to drop my rates $10 when it's less than a week out and I'm less than 20% occupied.
Ive occasionally set it to bump my rate for day-of reservations, but I've turned that off for now.
One nice thing about ResNexus's reports package is that it can tell me each month how much extra money I made due to yield management. It averages $90-140 a month depending on the season.
its worth noting that I still get into the system and manually adjust rates based on reservations. I should let the system do it, but habits die hard..

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?
.

Phineas,
When you indicate that your report tells you how much extra money you made and the average is $90-140 a month is this just the extra income coming from price increases? I am wondering if it is accounting for additional booking you may be getting when you lower your rate?

No, it has no way of knowing whether a booking came through because of the lowered rate of it they would have booked anyway. It simply shows me that I generated an extra $150 of revenue through YM rates by displaying those bookings that were at a higher (or lower) rate than the initial rate because of YM.
And to answer another question, yes, I push it through to OTAs. Although right now ResNexus has a known bug that doesn't allow it to push the higher rates to MyAllocator. I've lost a few bucks to this bug and considering how much I'm bitching about it, I expect they'll have it fixed next week just to shut me up.
.

Thanks. We are in an area with a lot of hotels and while we are not exactly comparable to a hotel, for about 60% of our business we are drawing from the same pool of customers. While I'm not trying to be the least expensive option, I also don't want to be overpriced, particularly if we are seeing soft demand. It makes me wonder that if during softer prices get lowered if we would not pick up some extra bookings.
In your scenario, if demand goes up and you rent a few more rooms at $10 or $20 more and your room rate is $150 you're making and extra $30 to $60. If another week the demand is a little lower and you lower the rates $10 or $20 and get just one booking you would not have gotten otherwise then you've made another $130-$140. This is the way it's been explained to me, so I'm probing in here to see if there is any reality to this or if anyone even has a way to measure it directly or indirectly.
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What I think works is the guest seeing a discounted rate online. Thus the ability to show a price with an X thru it and a lower price in its place.
I'm not sure having the lowest price in a series of prices works for the best.
It's a combination of things:

• Showing up at the top of a search
• Having the correct price for the guest
• Having good reviews
• Having a website that makes that guest want to stay

Just having the lowest price tends to bring in guests who are only booking on price. They may not care in the least what you are offering and so may treat you and your property as the way station they think you are.
I guess the best example is to use a hotel - the place I stayed in VT at $80/night treated me like a criminal. $80 is a cheap rate for that area. Spent $80/night in NY and was treated like an honored guest. $80 in that area is pricey. I'm not sure I made a point there. ;-)
I'm the first case we booked on price and location. Cheap price, good location. The second place we like the owners - not so cheap for the area, good location.
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Someone here once said, "You get what you charge." a spin off of the phase, "You get what you pay."
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Great points. In all of this I am not suggesting to charge the lowest price, but I'm also not suggesting to charge the highest price unless it is somehow warranted because you have some kind of special amenity which has perceived value to the potential customers which they are willing to pay a little more for. In my case if I am surrounded by a bunch of hotels, ranging from basic level economy motels, up through 5 star resorts, we will severely limit our potential customers if we do not monitor the price points of these various properties and try to keep our rates in the average of the mid level to upper level (3 -4 star) properties. Probably about 50% of our customer base will stay with us without even looking around much. These are regular and repeat customers who we give some preferential pricing to just out of loyalty. The other 50% are shopping around and those are the ones I'm trying to attract. They are the ones who may not know the difference between a B&B and a hotel or may not really care. Using yield management and pricing strategies I guess is what I'm trying to do or think about in order to better capture new customers in this space. Sure I wish 100% of my customer base fell into the first category, but for where I am that's not realistic so there is a degree of constant competition with the surrounding hotels.
To Duff's point even when the surrounding hotels lower their prices we will not go below a certain level because we do not want to "get what we charge for" at the lower end of the spectrum.
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Our pricing is mid range with the other inns. In the winter we can't compete on price with hotels that charge $69. In the summer, guests will pay the Hilton $299 and argue with me over $179. It's perception. They're a real business; we're just renting spare rooms.
I'm happy to let those folks go because they won't be happy here.
Oddly, I just had a call for a room for this weekend. Guests were OK with a b&b or they wouldn't have called. When they found out the Hilton is 15 feet from the railroad tracks they said that sounded good to them! No accounting for what makes people happy.