How to achieve your revenue management (Ep590)

In this episode of “Get Paid For Your Pad,” I had the pleasure of conversing with Rebecca Ballart, an expert in revenue management for the vacation rental industry. Rebecca shared valuable insights into the world of revenue management, offering tips and strategies for hosts and property managers to optimize their earnings.

Rebecca emphasized the importance of understanding your property's unique attributes and market demand. She stressed the need for daily monitoring of reservations and market data, ensuring that pricing strategies remain agile and responsive.

Rebecca also highlighted the significance of setting a strong foundation for pricing, focusing on factors like base price, length of stay, and last-minute discounts.
One standout point from our conversation was the discussion about the shrinking booking window.
Rebecca challenged the notion that booking windows are naturally shrinking, suggesting that overuse of far-out premiums may actually discourage guests from booking in advance. Instead, she encouraged hosts to reevaluate their pricing models and consider more moderate premiums to entice guests to book further ahead while still protecting peak rates.

If you're looking for more guidance on revenue management or want to connect with Rebecca, you can visit the Revenue Research website at https://www.revandresearch.com/
You can also find them on LinkedIn under “Rev and Research.”. For direct inquiries, you can reach Rebecca at rebecca@revandresearch.com

Additionally, Rebecca mentioned that she and her team will be attending various industry events throughout the year, making it a great opportunity to meet them in person, learn more about revenue management, and explore potential collaborations.

In conclusion, this insightful conversation with Rebecca Ballart shed light on the intricate world of revenue management in the vacation rental industry. By focusing on foundational pricing, being attentive to market dynamics, and rethinking far-out premiums, hosts and property managers can optimize their revenue and stay ahead in the competitive vacation rental market.

Jasper Ribbers:
Welcome back to GetPay3RipHead. It's very early here in San Diego. I just rolled out of bed and I'm ready for my first podcast

Rebecca Ballart:
Mm-hmm.

Jasper Ribbers:
interview here. My guest today is Rebecca Ballard. I hope I pronounced it correctly.

Rebecca Ballart:
Oh.

Jasper Ribbers:
She's the COO, Chief Operating Officer at Ref & Research, which is a revenue management consulting group. And just like the previous couple episodes, we are going to talk about revenue management today. So Rebecca, welcome to the show.

Rebecca Ballart:
Thank you so much. It's such an honor to be here. Big fan of the show, so it's always surreal to now be on it and not just listening at home.

Jasper Ribbers:
Awesome. I'm excited that you're here. I want to start it off with, I love your story of how you got into revenue management. So I'd love to kick it off with that. Yeah, can you share your story of how you became to be a revenue manager and now being part of this revenue management consulting group?

Rebecca Ballart:
Yeah, so I'm originally from Rockford, Illinois, which is a suburb right outside of Chicago, born and raised there. Met my husband actually down here. We live in Gulf Shores, Alabama. When we were in college, he decided to be crazy and moved to Chicago, leave the beach for this girl. Turned out that we dated for a long time and got married. had a life up there and after nine winters, he just was done with that and really wanted to move back to the beach. And at the time I was managing an Aveda salon and my only caveat to move was I needed a job. And that was really the only thing that was stopping us from moving. And that's when I kind of figured out about vacation rentals. I knew about them from coming to visit but didn't really know that this industry was so big. So when you're looking at job opportunities down here, hospitality is the number one thing. And I was like, I can do that. I can learn about it. Shouldn't be too hard. And so I just took a very entry level position that a management company down here on reservations team. I was like, I can answer the phone. I can make, you know, reservations. That seems fun. Little did I know how much went into that. So I started on that team, like I said, very entry level. It didn't take long for that team to kind of realize that I had a lot more tools in the arsenal that I kind of led off with. So that just being a reservation agent was kind of a short-lived position for me, but it was really good because I got to understand really the fundamentals of kind of how reservations are made and kind of got to talk to guests and understand their point of view. with that position, I then oversaw the whole reservations team. I brought a different perspective to the table because I hadn't been doing this for years. I hadn't had a lot of experience, but I asked a lot of questions. I wanted to understand why do we do it this way? And it wasn't like I was trying to change systems or challenge anyone. It was just, I had a different perspective. I had learned kind of really quickly. what the guests were kind of asking and, you know, what wouldn't it be easier if we did it this way? And it helped kind of cut off having so many questions. And so as I kind of oversaw that team, that's when I got handed the folder and said, hey, congratulations, you're doing a great job. You show up here, you're now the revenue manager. I was like, well, that seems fun, but like I have no idea what that means or. is someone going to teach me? And it was like the person that was doing it was leaving. Um, and it was just kind of like, Oh, you just put rates out there and, and here's your budgets. And there wasn't any type of like strategy in place at that time to kind of do that. They had kind of seasonality. Um, and I really was searching for education. I really wanted to understand how that worked and how I'm supposed to do a good job. And. was this rate good or not? How did I quantify? Did we win this month? Did we not? And so I asked a ton of questions and it was really difficult because it's not like I could call the competitor down the street and say, hey, is your occupancy good this month? Is it bad this month? You know, you didn't have that. I couldn't do that. So it really started to kind of lean into the industry. at conferences, webinars, and kind of learn and soak up as much as I could. But the problem was I walked away from those sessions with these really general ideas and I didn't know how to apply them. It felt like the person up there talking was, knew what they were talking about, but I didn't know how to take that and really apply it to us and to our owners and to our team. And so that really became where this mission kind of. birthed out of me was just there's such a need for education and there's such a need to learn. And a lot of times that people don't realize is revenue managers, it's a very lonely job. It's very lonely because you're, everyone's looking to you because if you're not making money, you don't have the, you're not making payroll to keep everybody in, in their positions. You're you know, expected to hit these targets, you're expected to hit these goals. And sometimes you have situations and expectations that are kind of weighing you down. And as your, you know, inventory grows, that becomes very daunting. And there is a lot of stress that goes into it that is making sense of data. You know, is this data clean data? Is this, you know, just my… data versus the market data. What should I be looking at? Where should I know these triggers? And so really found a lot of key people in the industry that helped me kind of understand that. A huge shout out to Jennifer Talbot with Keydata is we started using Keydata and it was a game changer for me. I finally understood what I was looking at and then I understood kind of what to do with that. What, okay, this is what my occupancy looks like. This is what the market occupancy looks like. So what is, now what do I do? Does that mean I change rates? Do I hold rates? And so she was a huge part in kind of helping me kind of run with that, those key fundamental things. So I continued to kind of work through that. And as my job kind of transferred, kind of grew, it oversaw a little bit more of the operations side. And that's where I really saw how. revenue management was the core of a lot of things that we were doing. It was very connected to the marketing team. How were we getting repeat guests? How were we, you know, rates are only as good as the people that see them. You know, if I put out a low rate and I'm just throwing it on Airbnb or Verbo and I'm not marketing it, I'm up against, you know, 2000 other listings. How is that going to benefit me? And so really, leaning into that, leaning into the operations side. You know, we started this thing called Gap Management, where we sent out to guests asking them if they wanted to extend or come early. And in theory, it seemed like a great idea. It was like, this is awesome. We can fill our calendar. Owners are going to be so happy. Um, you know, I just thought it was a win, win. And so we implemented that strategy of automatically. texting guests and sending them an email. It was like, hey, call us if you want to extend, we'll give you a discount. And it was incredible. It was just like pre-COVID, we started this probably in either 2018 or 2019, I can't remember exactly the year, but it was just during peak season and it was coming in, coming in, coming in. And I'll never forget the person that was over housekeeping scheduling came into my office and she was like, why do you hate me? And I was like, what are you talking about? I don't hate you. I think you do an incredible job. I don't want

Jasper Ribbers:
Heh.

Rebecca Ballart:
your job. And she was like, why

Jasper Ribbers:
Thanks for watching!

Rebecca Ballart:
are we getting so many reservations so last minute? Like I've had my schedule done and now I'm, I don't have enough cleaners to handle all these back-to-back turns and what happened? Why is this happening? And everyone keeps talking about this gap stuff and I don't understand what that is. And And at that moment, I never realized how the decisions that we were making for our revenue, you know, getting those gaps filled was really stressing our cleaning and laundry department. I never thought about giving them a heads up of saying, hey, we're going to add 20 back-to-back turns this Saturday. How is that going to affect your schedule? You know, and they made it happen. They were champs. you know, and it was like, okay, maybe we need to think about this. Like, let's restructure this to maybe only do it on days that we have enough staff, or let's, you know, kind of slow down a little bit if we've got a lot of arrivals. Let's, or, hey, we have a lot of turns. Let's see if we can make these people stay another day to kind of help our housekeeping team. So it was for all from a strategy standpoint, kind of looking at that. But a lot of that came because I understood the operations because I had come through kind of different, many different roles through that time period to really simplify, you know, be able to go, how does this benefit every team member? Because we are all a team, we all win as a team. And if one of us, if this is breaking a system, are we really winning? Did it, at what cost did that come at? So,

Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Ballart:
So sorry that kind of sidetracked my roles. Um, but as I was, you know, continuing to grow, I was at that company a little over, um, about seven years, and I just felt like I had given a lot and I was ready for kind of the next step. And that's when I was at a conference and met Ben and, uh, Ben Coleman is my partner and we just started talking about revenue management and he was like, no one. No one talks like this. And I was like, well, this has been my life for seven years. And he was, he asked me this question that really stuck with me that night. And he said, if you could have the perfect job, what would it be? Like if you could design the perfect job, what would it be? And I was very confused. I was like, I don't know. I haven't thought about that. Like I've never, I've just always spit the mold that someone else had. And I said, I'm really passionate about education. I'm really passionate about. helping people because no one helped me. There was no one that I could lean on, no one that I could talk to. And I just feel like there's this really big void in the industry. And that's when he kind of shared with me what he was doing on the consulting side. And he was like, you know, would you wanna kind of think about joining me? And it was scary and it was a leap of faith, but it's been the greatest thing that I've ever done. to kind of jump into that and now we're about 30 clients in all over the world Seeing a whole bunch of different markets and helping a bunch of people. So it's been really fun To learn and kind of use those fundamentals that I learned seven years ago and put them in place and kind of show and teach other people The greatest compliment we ever get is with our clients that say I feel like I got my business back I feel like I now understand

Jasper Ribbers:
Mmm.

Rebecca Ballart:
what's happening. Because it's, I think as consultants, there's kind of this stigma of like, oh, they're gonna come in and change everything. But really we're just there to coach and we're really there to cheer them on and show them, maybe they have weak spots, but maybe they have really strong, strong suits. And it's like, let's just kind of tweak a little bit of your weak spots and let you run. and do the things that you're passionate about and your team is strong at. So it's really great to kind of see it come full circle. So it's just been about an 18 month journey. We started in May of 2022. So it's been a little over that and it's just, we're growing and it's really exciting. We're partnering with KeyData to kind of automate data, be able to help clients make more data-driven decisions. So it's been really, really great.

Jasper Ribbers:
One question that comes to mind is like if you're in all these different markets with your clients, right? Is there a set of kind of evergreen strategies that apply to all markets? Or is it very the strategy, the best revenue management strategy is a very market dependent? And does it take some time? Like if you have a new market where you're going to be pricing… How much time do you kind of need to understand the market, understand the listings and really figure out what the best strategy is?

Rebecca Ballart:
Yeah, no, I think that's a great question. I really feel like a lot of markets fall in two categories. There is the urban, 365 days, maybe that's your big cities, it's constant travel, whether it's business travel or sports or any of those kinds of things, there's constantly visitors coming, it doesn't matter about season. And then there's your seasonality markets. Those are your beach, your lake, your ski, that have very heavy peak times. Some of those markets are seeing less peak and a little bit stronger shoulder seasons, but there still is very much a peak and a softsat season. So I really do feel like even internationally, there's those two differences. I think you can get. super, you know, dissect those seasonality ones, ski versus beach versus lake versus, you know, you can have a bunch of subcategories, but I really feel like the fundamentally there's two separates. And I think that kind of is your strategy can be based off of what type of market you're in. Urban markets are very different than seasonal markets. Urban markets have very short booking windows. You might be up until the day of arrival getting bookings for that specific place where, you know, beach, you're looking at larger homes, six, seven-bedroom homes that sleep, you know, 20-plus people. That takes more planning. It's higher ADRs. You know, it might be grandma and grandpa making a reservation to bring the whole family down, and they're booking, you know, five, six months in advance. So you need to have those rates. dialed in at that booking window. So it is different, but the same. It's just kind of urban is a little bit more hybrid where you kind of have, it's go, no weekends left behind for a lot of them, where more of these seasonal markets are, you better have those peak seasons as right as possible.

Jasper Ribbers:
And so let's say you enter a new market, right?

Rebecca Ballart:
Mm-hmm.

Jasper Ribbers:
You determine, OK, is this a seasonal or is this an urban market? And that already gives you quite a lot of information.

Rebecca Ballart:
Mm-hmm.

Jasper Ribbers:
But then is there a learning curve to learn a new market, just the little details and specifics of it?

Rebecca Ballart:
Yeah, absolutely. I think you really have to lean into the market data. You really have to create a comp set. You have to understand because you could have a goal of, you know, here's my, I want to make rental revenue of $50,000, but you need to know if that's a realistic goal. You need to know our other homes or apartments doing that same goal. If they're not, you're setting yourself up for failure right out of the gate. And maybe they're actually doing 75 or 100 and you're coming in way too low. You get excited. You put these rates out and it's like booking, booking. And you're like, oh, this is great. This is great. And then all of a sudden at the end of the year, you only made 40,000. And it's like, how did I not make my goal when I had all these bookings? And it's like, well, I was so underpriced that people booked me farther out and I wasn't really paying attention to what was happening with the market. So I do think that you really do have to spend some time. And it is tough, especially this year. It's very tough to look at markets because there is such a wide variety of rates. You have some people that are very, very high, and then you have some people that, because they've seen an increase in supply and softening demand, they've bottomed out their rates. So… you see very low. I was just sharing with a client the other day, a five bedroom home that had everything from $100 a night to $1,000 a night. And I was like, this is the wild, wild west. I mean, we're right in the middle here, and that's kind of where we wanted to be. I was like, we're not the highest, we're not the lowest, but realistically, is that home gonna book at $1,000 a night this time of the year? No. but we need to know kind of what we're up against. If your owner comes to you and asks, why are they not at $1,000 a night? You need to explain, well, we're right in the middle. We're not the lowest, we're not the highest. We wanna be the most bookable. So I do think that is really tough this year in a lot of markets because there is such a fluctuation in a lot of supply that's coming to a lot of markets. And unfortunately, a lot of those rates are not data-driven rates, they're feeling rates. I feel like I should be getting this amount. And that's great if the market responds that way. But if the market does not book at your feeling rates, then you need to make some decisions and make some changes. And that's where it can get really scary because you have to trust yourself and trust the data that you're looking at. No, is this good data that I'm looking at? Is it, you know? are these homes really comparable to mine? Or is this, you know, am I really using the right set of homes to compare myself to can become really difficult.

Jasper Ribbers:
To what extent is the marketing side part of your job as a revenue manager? When I say the marketing side, I mean, for example, the listings, the OTA listings.

Rebecca Ballart:
Ahem.

Jasper Ribbers:
Let's say you look at the data and your place is not really getting booked, but then you look at the pricing and you see that you're actually very… well priced compared to competitors, but you're still not really getting booked, right?

Rebecca Ballart:
Mm-hmm.

Jasper Ribbers:
Then you might have to look at, okay, well, am I advertising my listings correctly? Right?

Rebecca Ballart:
Mm-hmm.

Jasper Ribbers:
So are you as a revenue manager, are you in charge of deciding what photos do we put on our listing? You know, all that stuff, is that part of it?

Rebecca Ballart:
Previously, in my previous job, yes, I think distribution and revenue management kind of go hand in hand. Right now with a lot of our full service clients, we kind of give some feedback. I don't actually go in and change the photos. I'll give feedback on that because I do think that they are very connected, especially with your headlines. Are all of your amenities checked? You know, think about what I always tell this to clients is when you're scrolling through Airbnb, what makes you stop? What makes you stop and go, Ooh, that's a really cool listing. That's neat. Like if that gets you to stop and you know what you're looking for, it's definitely going to get a guest to stop. Um, and in the bad side, if it gets you to stop to go, Ooh, what is that? Like, I don't want to stay there. Um, That's what your guests are going to see. So I do think, you know, as when you do personal travel, and, you know, I'm looking to go to an area and I'm on those sites because I want to find out who manages it so then I can, you know, go to their website and book it directly. But that's what I'm doing. I'm scrolling through the pages to kind of find the one that sticks out with the has the right headline that tells me all the amenities that I know exactly what I'm going to get when I show up there. is huge because it's definitely, you know, your rates are only as good as the people that are willing to pay for them. You know, it's, it is really a marketing game, especially if you're wanting to work the direct side of it. You want people to understand your brand and you want people to come back to you. You have to make them want to, you know, because they know they can get all the information they can. It's easy to use. It's All of those things, there's nothing more frustrating than trying to book a place and it doesn't let you. You're just going to go to the next website. You're going to just go to the next listing because it's like, oh, that doesn't work. Or you get to the end and you're like, oh my gosh, all of these fees, I'm going to go look at another listing. That's not, I'm not doing that. So it's, I mean, those all play into a huge role of revenue management.

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, makes sense. Let's see, I have a few other questions here. You mentioned last week when we were talking, you mentioned a funny story about Taylor Swift.

Rebecca Ballart:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
You want to share that story? I think it was in Denver, right?

Rebecca Ballart:
Yeah, yeah. So each morning I kind of start off my day looking at my clients' booking reports just to make sure reservations that have come in over the night, everything looks okay, nothing too crazy happening. Just because you do want to keep your eye on the ball. No matter how many clients you have, you always want to kind of just make sure nothing crazy happened at night. And we have a client in Denver and I saw like two or three reservations for the same dates in July come in. And the ADRs were pretty good. And I was like, that is really strange. Um, it just kind of caught my eye and honestly wouldn't have probably thought too much about it, but it was just three right in a row downtown. And then as I kind of refresh, I saw another one coming. I was like, okay, something is happening in Denver in July. Like we don't have basketball, you know, football hasn't started. Yeah. Baseball, but that, that's not a big. draw and I called Ben and I was like, something is happening in Denver in July. I don't know like rates are, the pricing tool is spiking. So it's seen, we use Wheelhouse. I was like, it's seen demand. Something is happening and I don't know if we're on the good side of it or the bad side. Like, and he's like, I don't, I don't know. And I was like, I got to turn to good old Google to find out, um, just search, you know, events in Denver in July. All of a sudden the first one popped up and it was like Taylor Swift, three nights in Denver and that day is when all the Ticketmaster stuff had happened. I was like, oh my gosh, how did I miss this? I wasn't even thinking about Taylor Swift causing this huge spike in ADR. As soon as we kind of popped it up and I contacted our client, I was like, you're going to see some rates in downtown Denver in July that are really high. Um, but apparently Taylor Swift is in town and they're like, oh yeah, it's, you know, a big deal. And we've seen that with a couple of other concert events. Coachella is another big one. Um, you know, luckily we were kind of prepared for that one. We knew that was going to kind of spike some things. Um, you know, major sporting events, the Superbowl and Scottsdale this year, along with the golf tournament was a big one. Um, so you really do have to be tuned in. to all of those social events because you never know what is going to really drastically drive your revenue. So, it is, same thing goes with weather. If you're seeing a hurricane come in your track and all of a sudden you're seeing a ton of cancellations, it's definitely… something to be aware of. So there is a side of revenue management that means you've got to watch the news and kind of pay attention to pop culture to make sure that you're making the most of your choices and you're not getting stuck too late with going, oh man, we left a ton of money on the table because we didn't realize that this concert was coming and it was going to be really close. So these people could all walk to the venue. and they're willing to pay a lot of money for those rooms. So it's definitely something that I never would have thought of as a revenue manager that I had to be aware of whether in social things, but it does keep the job.

Jasper Ribbers:
So that kind of leads into my next question, because what I see a lot in our community is hosts who have a pricing app, but they never really look at that, right? Or maybe once a month, they go in there and change a couple of things. But I feel like it's really important as a revenue manager to really have a daily routine of, like you mentioned, like, hey, let's see what bookings came in, right? Let's look at the market data and see if anything has changed. our rankings of our listings and the search results, right? Like all that type of stuff we need to monitor because it's gonna give us clues as to what's

Rebecca Ballart:
Thank

Jasper Ribbers:
happening,

Rebecca Ballart:
you.

Jasper Ribbers:
right? And we might have to respond to that. So I'm curious, like, what's your, do you have a daily routine? Like, let's just say you're managing, you know, for a client with 30 units, for example, do

Rebecca Ballart:
Mm-hmm.

Jasper Ribbers:
you have a daily routine where you go through a list of things or is it a weekly thing? Or what's your rhythm when it comes to this stuff?

Rebecca Ballart:
Yeah, I mean, I definitely have daily routines and they kind of I have daily, weekly and monthly. Just looking at daily, like you said, looking at the reservations that have come in, making sure everything kind of looks good. I want to find if there's any errors, I want to find them right away. Just if maybe a PMS system disconnected or, you know, we kind of had a low rate come in. I want to be ahead of it. So that's really what I spend a lot of time start the day off and kind of end the day off just kind of checking Making sure everything looks good. Nothing kind of Came in at the long wrong length of stay or anything like that Just to make sure everything's kind of grooving how it's supposed to and then daily and weekly kind of looking at the portfolio at that 30, 60 day out, just to kind of, depending on the market, if we're in an urban market, I'm looking at that week and the next week, just making sure that the pricing is kind of in line, I don't see anything too crazy happening, keeping in mind those events, things like that, if we're holding kind of higher rate because of a home football game. Like we have a client who's. right down the street from the Notre Dame field. So, you know, we've got a home game this Sunday. Start watching those rates to make sure anything that's open, we're starting to get those rates aggressive as it gets closer so that we don't have any open occupancy on game day, we wanna be full. So it is making sure that we're looking out at that week or month to. capitalize on the opportunities. I think as revenue managers and as property managers, we really want the easy way. We want it to be like, oh, let's just set it and forget it. And the pricing tool, let it run. That's not a good option. That's not a good way to capitalize revenue

Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah

Rebecca Ballart:
just because you can find errors too late. You can kind of see some things happen. And it is really hard work. It is looking at the market and going, okay, hey, I'm looking at my occupancy for the next 30 days and I'm only 50% occupied. Normally we're around 70. What is the market doing? Oh, the market's only at 20. Okay, so it's not just a me issue. It is a whole market issue. Okay, let's look at our rates. Are we in line with the market? Yep, okay. So now it's a demand thing. It's, I can make these rates go down lower. I'm already lower than the market. I'm higher in occupancy. Am I really gonna see a big change if I go down another 10%? Maybe not. So it's really knowing what you're up against, I think is a big, big key of just not only internally, but then what is the market telling you? because I think people make some knee-jerk reactions and can really sacrifice money. And it's like, you didn't really have to do that. It may not have been the best move for you, for your brand, for that kind of thing. So it is, you know, internally watching what's going on, but keeping an eye on what's going on in the markets around you. What is your competition doing? If everyone around you is changing their length of stay to two nights and you're holding it three or five and they're more occupied than you are, then maybe you have to look at your length of stay. Maybe you have to kind of, it's not a pricing thing. It's about your rules. Maybe you only have check-ins on certain days and your competitors don't. It may not be a rate issue. holding you back. And I think that's something that a lot of people kind of think it's just about rate when it's really not. It can be about a lot of other things too.

Jasper Ribbers:
Hmm. Yeah. I think that's a really good point. You know, it's not a, if your, if your company isn't what you

Rebecca Ballart:
Uh

Jasper Ribbers:
like

Rebecca Ballart:
huh.

Jasper Ribbers:
it to be, uh, it's, it's not always, doesn't always mean that you just have to jack down the prices, right?

Rebecca Ballart:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
There's other things that could cause that. Um, so it could be, as you know, it could be a sign to investigate

Rebecca Ballart:
Mm-hmm.

Jasper Ribbers:
like, Hey, what's going on here? Right. Um,

Rebecca Ballart:
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers:
sweet. So Last question for you, Rebecca. I was just curious, if somebody's listening right now, and let's say they're in that situation where they have a pricing tool and they've set it up, and then just let it do its thing, what are a few tips, a few action items, like what the host can do to improve their revenue management?

Rebecca Ballart:
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really understanding your settings, because I think it's super great about a lot of these pricing jewels have added more settings and adding more features and all these things that as property managers, we've asked for. But it's always those settings. You can overcomplicate things very quickly. we've seen some clients that have come to us and it's like they've layered all these settings on top of each other and it's like, well, no wonder. Like you've basically stopped the pricing model or pricing, you know, dynamic pricing from stopping because you've put all these settings on it. You've put all these different caveats and you're wondering why, you know, you've seen reservations dry up. And it's like, Strip those things off like yeah, they're great features, but let's go back to the fundamentals let's go back to making sure that your Base price is set up your length of stay is set up your last minute discounts your Premium your far out premium is set up correctly and once that's done once the foundation is correct Then you can go and add on those extra kind of settings and different things because I think we overcomplicate it too much. A big thing that I've talked a lot about is, you know, this year we've talked a ton about the shrinking booking window, where it's like, man, this year the booking window shrunk. How do we get it to stretch out? What's the best thing? And it's like, I had an aha movement a couple months ago and it was like, okay, yes, the booking window is shrunk. We have data that supports that in a lot of markets. But I started asking the questions, why? Why did it shrink? How do we unshrink it? And after I was kind of like thinking through, I was like, did it really shrink? Or did we make it shrink? And what I mean by that is we have, as an industry, got really trigger happy with far out premiums. where we've gotten a lot of, it's very easy, and a lot of these pricing jewels to go, anything over 180 days, we're gonna put a 30 to 40% increase on it. Because if a guest wants to book that far out, they're gonna pay more. And once we get within that timeframe, then we'll take that premium off and we'll work on that. But you have to know your booking window to know if that's a good option, because, and don't, Don't take this as I'm against far out premiums. I'm not. I think that they can be used very successfully. But I think that we've abused them to the point where we have forced the guest to now wait because, and also we've trained them that last minute, you're gonna get a discount because we need to fill these rooms. So now we've basically told you, if you book far out, you're gonna pay more. But if you wait, you'll probably get a discount. We have created this problem. And now we're sitting here going, how do we undo this?

Jasper Ribbers:
Thanks for watching!

Rebecca Ballart:
How do we get the consumer to trust us again, to book at the best rate 365 days, but also not leave money on the table? And that is a very, very passion point of mine right now. is just having 365 days of bookable rates. You can have premiums, you need to protect your peak, you need to protect your holidays, weekends, absolutely. Don't give those away 365 days out. But if you know that this home is a struggle, it has a hard time booking, don't put 30% premium on it this far out. Maybe five. 10% premium because it may not make that. And so it's like, you look at what should you get this year for July ADR and it's like, oh, I got $200. Well next year I'm asking $800. Well it's not going to book. And then I'm going to miss the booking window. And so now I'm going to have to sell it for $150 because I waited too long. When maybe, what if I just put it at $300 and got it booked?

Jasper Ribbers:
Hmm

Rebecca Ballart:
I got more than I got last year? And I didn't get as high, but that other home that has a pool and books really well, and it's the first choice, that one can handle a 40% far out premium. But some of my struggling homes, they can't. And so that I think is a huge, huge opportunity for people, but it's hard work. You have to know your inventory. You have to know what homes can… hold their own when it comes to that far out premium. And you have to know which ones to pull back on. We talk a lot about bottom up units. We talk about identifying the bottom 10% of your portfolio because once you get them off the bottom and you get those performing like the higher end homes that are doing well, all of a sudden your revenue just skyrockets because you don't have this anchor weighing you down anymore. And so it's, why would we want to set them up on bad foundation 365 days out? Because those are always the units that every month you're kind of looking at discounting, you're trying to get them booked and it's like, oh, I just wish someone would rent this house. And then when you do get a booking, it's like, yes, thank God we got it booked. But it's really, I think as revenue managers, that's one of the biggest things that I try to teach people to understand. your portfolio. Understand how to segment out top performers, middle performers, and low performers. And when you know, it's difficult because you have to know what your top performers are doing because how far you can push them. Your middle performers, you have to keep a close eye on them because from week to week, they can have a good booking week that pushes them in the top performer group. They could have a bad week and not get any bookings and all of a sudden now they're in the struggling unit group. So you do have to keep kind of a close eye on those. But then also looking at your struggling unit, where are we struggling? How, what can we do? Can we maybe change our link those stay? Can we adjust our headlines, adjust our pictures? Any of those kind of things to. pull out all the stops to get them to not be struggling is something that I think once you do that, you start to see your booking windows lengthen. You start to see you're getting bookings farther out for better ADR than what you got last year. And so all of a sudden, and now this sounds very easy and it's not, it can be a little complicated, but it doesn't always work this way. But if we want to lengthen our booking windows. and we want to get stronger ADR, it's about being intentional now for the next 365 days. And that's where it is the roll up your sleeves and get into your revenue management and understand kind of the ins and outs of what's happening in your market and in your homes.

Jasper Ribbers:
Awesome, Rebecca. Thank you so much for joining us today. I definitely learned a lot from you. And if people want to contact you or learn more about your company, where can we find more information?

Rebecca Ballart:
Yeah, so you can come to our website, revenueresearch.com. You can find us on LinkedIn also under revenue research, or send me an email, rebecca at revenue research. Pretty simple, we're all over, and we've kind of started that conference season too. So myself and Ben and Kelly will be at a lot of events here through the end of the year. So come and find us, we'd love to meet you and talk about revenue management.

Jasper Ribbers:
Awesome. Sweet. Rekha, thank you so much for joining.

Rebecca Ballart:
Thank you.

Jasper Ribbers:
And to the listeners, hope you enjoyed this episode. We have a few more revenue management podcasts coming up. So excited for that. And have a great weekend. We'll see you next time.

Rebecca Ballart:
Thanks.