Airbnb Introduces New Seasonal and Last-Minute Pricing Tools: Can They Replace a Revenue Management Strategy?
Airbnb continues to introduce tools that make it easier for property owners to adjust prices, minimum stays, and discounts according to the season and how close the check-in date is. New features include the ability to vary base prices by month, adjust weekend rates, and configure progressive discounts for last-minute bookings.
These tools can be useful, especially for owners who manage their accommodation directly. However, there is an important difference between using an automated tool to change prices and developing a true revenue management strategy. A platform can analyze demand and suggest rates, but professional management should also consider the property’s profitability, different sales channels, historical booking behavior, and the specific characteristics of each accommodation.
What New Pricing Tools Is Airbnb Introducing?
Airbnb now allows hosts to manage pricing more specifically according to the time of year. Owners can set different base prices by month, apply percentage adjustments for weekends, and use recommendations based on the demand for similar properties in the area. Suggestions can be reviewed and modified before being applied, meaning that the owner still maintains control over their rates.
The platform has also introduced specific settings for dates that are approaching without a booking. These include the possibility of reducing the minimum stay requirement in the days leading up to check-in and applying progressive discounts for last-minute reservations.
These tools are designed to increase the chances of securing a booking for nights that are still available, but that does not mean lowering the price is always the best decision.
Is Lowering the Price as the Date Approaches Always Recommended?
Not necessarily. Once an available night has passed, it can no longer be sold, so in certain situations it may make sense to use a discount to generate demand. However, automatically reducing prices every time a date gets closer can damage the accommodation’s commercial strategy.
Imagine an apartment in Andorra that is still available five days before a weekend in February. A tool might suggest lowering the price to increase the chances of securing a booking, but demand for that weekend may actually be high, there may be very few comparable properties left, or a specific event may be generating last-minute reservations. In that situation, reducing the rate could mean selling below the price the market was willing to pay.
At other times, the opposite may be true. If demand is lower and there is still a large amount of accommodation available, a controlled price reduction may help secure a booking that probably would not have arrived at the original rate.
That is why a last-minute discount is not good or bad by itself. What matters is knowing when to use it.
Airbnb Offers Tools, but It Does Not Know Your Property’s Entire Strategy
Airbnb’s recommendations can provide useful information, but the platform mainly analyzes behavior within its own ecosystem. A professionally managed property may be listed simultaneously on Airbnb, Booking.com, its own direct website, and other channels, each with different commissions, promotions, and customer profiles.
A revenue management strategy should look at the accommodation as a complete business, not simply as a listing within one platform.
Automated Pricing and Revenue Management Are Not the Same Thing
Revenue management uses information about demand, occupancy, booking lead time, availability, distribution channels, and market behavior to make decisions about pricing and inventory with the aim of improving the accommodation’s performance.
It is not limited to changing rates. It also considers factors such as minimum stay requirements, availability, distribution, and the relationship between price and demand.
An automated tool may detect that bookings are low and recommend reducing the price. A revenue manager, however, should first ask why that date is not selling, what is happening in the market, how much availability remains, what happened during similar periods in previous years, and what margin the property needs to maintain.
That is the main difference.
What Can a Pricing Manager Do That a Platform Cannot Do on Its Own?
A professional management company can combine information from different sales channels and analyze each property individually. Not every property behaves in the same way, even when they are located in the same area. A property with a jacuzzi, several bedrooms, a terrace, or a particularly desirable location may have a completely different booking curve from another nearby apartment.
At AndStay, we review factors such as occupancy, booking pace, booking lead time, market prices, seasonality, weekends, events, historical performance, and remaining availability before deciding whether a rate should increase, stay the same, or decrease.
The objective is not to always have the lowest price or to achieve occupancy at any cost. It is about finding the right balance between occupancy, average rate, and net profitability.
In Andorra, Seasonality Makes This Management Especially Important
Andorra has a tourism market strongly influenced by seasonality. A Saturday in February during ski season can experience completely different demand from a Tuesday in November, but even within the same season there can be major differences between weekends, school holidays, public holidays, and weekdays.
For this reason, working only with one winter rate and another summer rate is often not enough. It can also be risky to automatically apply aggressive discounts when only a few days remain before arrival.
On certain high-demand dates, waiting can allow the property to sell at a better price, while on other dates it may be better to react earlier and launch a promotion while there is still enough time to influence travelers’ booking decisions.
A good strategy should not only answer the question, “How many days are left until check-in?” It should also ask, “What is happening with demand for this date?”
Reducing the Minimum Stay Can Be More Effective Than Lowering the Price
In some cases, the problem is not that the accommodation is too expensive, but that the booking conditions are preventing guests from reserving it. If there are two nights available between existing bookings but the property has a three-night minimum stay, temporarily reducing that restriction may help fill the gap without significantly lowering the rate.
This is precisely one of the functions of revenue management: before lowering prices, analyze whether there are other ways to generate demand, such as changing minimum stay requirements, policies, promotions, or availability.
Discounts Can Also Affect Price Perception
Last-minute promotions and discounts can help increase visibility and stimulate demand, but using them constantly can also have unintended effects.
If an accommodation always reduces its rates as the arrival date approaches, some guests may become accustomed to booking later because they expect a better offer.
That is why at AndStay we prefer every discount to have a specific objective. A promotion should respond to a particular need in the calendar, rather than automatically becoming the standard sales strategy.
A Platform Looks for Bookings, a Strategy Should Look for Profitability
Airbnb has an interest in helping accommodations generate bookings and keeping prices competitive within its platform. For the property owner, however, the question should go one step further: is that booking generating the right return for my property?
A lower rate may increase the chances of securing a booking, but it can also reduce average revenue. At the same time, keeping prices too high can result in empty nights.
Revenue management is therefore about finding the point where price, demand, and occupancy work together. The objective should not simply be to sell more, but to sell better and protect the property’s real profitability.
So, Should You Use Airbnb’s New Pricing Tools?
Yes, they can be very useful, but they should be used as tools within a strategy, not as a replacement for strategy.
Seasonal recommendations can help identify changes in demand, last-minute discounts can be useful for specific dates, and more flexible minimum stay settings can help close gaps in the calendar. The important thing is to review each recommendation before applying it and make sure it fits the financial objectives of the accommodation.
For an owner who has the time and knowledge to constantly review their calendar, these tools can make management much easier. When there are several properties, different platforms, or a more complex commercial strategy, working with a management company allows all that information to be turned into coordinated decisions.
What Can AndStay Bring to the Strategy?
At AndStay, we do not manage prices from just one platform. We analyze the property as a whole and manage rates, availability, promotions, minimum stays, and distribution across different channels based on the performance we want to achieve.
This means an automated Airbnb recommendation can be useful as one more signal, but it does not necessarily become the final decision. We may maintain a rate when we believe demand is still strong, reduce it when the calendar genuinely needs it, adjust stay conditions, or work with other channels if there is a better opportunity.
Professional management also makes it possible to review how Airbnb, Booking.com, and other channel commissions affect the owner’s final revenue. We are not simply looking for more bookings, we are looking for bookings that make financial sense for each property.
Conclusion
Airbnb’s new tools are making it increasingly easy to manage prices, seasons, and last-minute bookings, but automation does not eliminate the need for a commercial strategy.
Lowering prices as a date approaches can be useful in certain situations, but doing so automatically without analyzing demand, competition, historical performance, and profitability can mean selling below the property’s true potential. At the same time, keeping rates consistently high can lead to empty nights that can never be recovered.
Technology can recommend a price, but strategy must decide whether that price makes sense.
At AndStay, we help tourist accommodation owners manage their pricing through revenue management, dynamic pricing, and multichannel distribution, continuously reviewing the performance of each property to find the best possible balance between occupancy and profitability.
Because managing prices is not simply about raising or lowering them. It is about understanding when to do it, how much to adjust, and why.
