If you’re a short-term rental host, you already know that pricing directly impacts occupancy, revenue, and long-term profitability. But reviewing your Airbnb pricing strategy doesn’t mean deleting your calendar rates and rebuilding everything from zero. Many short-term rent (STR) hosts make one of two mistakes: they either ignore pricing performance for too long, or they panic and overhaul their entire rate strategy after a slow month.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to audit your Airbnb pricing without starting from scratch. We’ll walk through a practical framework that helps you evaluate performance, benchmark against competitors, and fine-tune your rates using real data.
Step 1: Analyse your last 3 years of Airbnb performance data
Before adjusting a single rate, you need context. Start with your raw numbers inside Airbnb (or your PMS or revenue management system if you use one). Pull the following data for each of the last three years:
- Occupancy rate (monthly and annual)
- ADR (Average Daily Rate)
- RevPAN (Revenue per Available Night)
- Booking lead time
- Average length of stay
- Cancellation rate
- Total revenue per month
Then lay it out side by side. A simple comparison table works:
Now, start analysing and ask yourself practical questions. Such as: Has your average length of stay shortened? Are shoulder seasons getting weaker or stronger? Is ADR rising but occupancy dropping? Not just that, you’d also want to analyse consistently strong months (true peak season), consistently weak months (pricing sensitivity period) and outlier months (events, disruptions, market changes).
Next, review booking window trends. If lead time is shrinking, your pricing needs to become more reactive. If guests are booking earlier than before, your early pricing may be too low.
Basically, your past three years tell you 3 things: Where you consistently leave money on the table, where you are pricing correctly, and where market behaviour has shifted. Only once you clearly understand those patterns should you move to the next step.
Step 2: Benchmark against 3-5 direct and indirect competitors
Identify 3-5 similar listings in your immediate neighbourhood that focus on those with the same bedroom count, similar amenities, and comparable guest ratings. Check their nightly base rates, cleaning fees, and minimum stay requirements. If their calendars are full while yours has gaps, they may have found a sweet spot in the market that you’re missing.
Evaluate indirect competitors like boutique hotels or serviced apartments nearby. If a local hotel offers a king suite with a pool for $250, and your cosy apartment is priced at $240 with no amenities, you have a value proposition issue. To make this process easier, use dynamic pricing for Airbnb tools like Beyond to access comparative data insights and see how your listing stacks up against the broader market in real-time.
Step 3: Calculate the true cost of running your Airbnb
Before adjusting your pricing upward or downward, you need to know one number with certainty: your true breakeven cost per night. If you don’t know this figure, every pricing decision is speculative.
Start by separating your costs into three categories:
Now convert this into a usable metric:
Step one: calculate total annual operating cost.
Step two: divide that by your realistic annual available nights (not 365 — account for personal use and maintenance blocks).
Step three: divide again by your expected occupancy rate.
Let’s take this example:
If your property is realistically available 340 nights per year and operates at 75% occupancy:
340 × 0.75 = 255 booked nights
Breakeven per booked night = $48,000 ÷ 255 = $188 per night
That means anything below $188 is eroding profit before tax.
The purpose of this step is not to inflate pricing. It’s to define your non-negotiable minimum. Once you know your true cost per occupied night, you can adjust rates confidently - because every pricing decision will now protect margin rather than guess at it.
Step 4: Identify discounting patterns and customer segmentation issues
At this stage, you’ve reviewed your historical performance, benchmarked competitors, and calculated your true operating costs. Now you need to examine how your discounting strategy and guest mix are affecting revenue.
Start by pulling data from Airbnb or your PMS and look at:
- Percentage of bookings using weekly or monthly discounts
- Frequency of last-minute discounts being triggered
- Average ADR for discounted bookings vs non-discounted bookings
- Booking window distribution (0–7 days, 8–30 days, 30+ days)
- Length of stay breakdown
Then assess whether your discounts are intentional or automatic leakage. For example:
Now ask practical questions:
- Are weekly discounts too aggressive relative to cleaning costs?
- Are last-minute discounts activating before demand actually softens?
- Are longer stays generating lower RevPAR than shorter, higher-yield bookings?
- Are discounts compensating for overpricing earlier in the booking window?
Also evaluate minimum stays. Overly rigid minimums can block high-value short stays during shoulder periods. On the other hand, low minimum stays in peak season may prevent you from capturing full-week revenue.
At this stage, you should look for revenue dilution caused by unnecessary discounting or any missed opportunities to segment pricing by demand type. Discounting should be strategic, not reactive. Every reduction must have a reason: filling shoulder nights, increasing occupancy in low season, or securing longer stays that reduce turnover cost.
Step 5: Align your pricing with your original business goals
Finally, ask yourself if your current pricing reflects why you started this business. If your goal is capital growth and premium positioning, a high-occupancy, low-rate strategy might be damaging your brand. Conversely, if cash flow is king, you may need to simplify your pricing tiers to ensure you aren't scaring off potential guests with overly complex add-on fees.
Evaluate whether your rates reflect your value metrics, your premium amenities, your proximity to landmarks, or your unique interior design. Remember, a pricing audit is a strategic reset. Small, data-backed adjustments made today will compound over the next 12 months, resulting in significant revenue differences. It’s about working smarter, not just harder.
Ready to strengthen your Airbnb pricing strategy?
Knowing how to price an Airbnb listing effectively requires more than just a gut feeling; it requires real-time data. Manual audits are a fantastic starting point, but the market moves faster than a spreadsheet can keep up with. Beyond provides a data-driven solution to automate your pricing audits and provide constant market benchmarking so you never miss a beat.
With a sophisticated dynamic pricing engine, revenue forecasting, and deep competitor insights, Beyond helps you stay ahead of the competition while you focus on being a great host. Ready to see where you stand? Use their free property analyser tool to validate your current rates and discover your true revenue potential. Grow your bookings today with the tools the pros use!
.png){kind=small}
.png){kind=small}