Differences in Rates Explained

I’m trying to decide between your properties, and it appears that they rent for similar rates, but my quotes show a big discrepancy for the same dates at different homes. I thought one was bigger and nicer than the other? Why the difference in price?

While what you say is true, the villas are much more alike than they are different, and each has their own strengths.  For example, BOV has nicer bathrooms, POV has the nicer kitchen and pool deck.

For many years Breezy Oak has been more popular due to the privacy of the back yard, but as the landscaping we did at Pleasant Oak grew to provide a similar degree of visual privacy in the pool area, it has become many guest’s first choice.

We use fairly sophisticated software to price the villas for particular dates. At a base level both properties start out at the same price. One of the things that happens with the software is the incentivizing or de-incentivizing of certain bookings.

Running a successful vacation rental is a lot like playing the game Tetris. That’s the old video game where the different shapes come down from the top, and you have to arrange them as they fall to eliminate gaps between them. If you eliminate gaps, the lines of blocks disappear and you get to play longer and rack up more points. In a vacation rental business, a single night gap can mean the difference between success or failure! This is because the rate for a single night is far more than the profit made on a one or two week booking.

If a particular request comes in for dates that will leave a gap in the calendar, the price goes up to make that booking less appealing, or make it viable given the gap that it may create when aligned with already existing bookings. Or the rate may be discounted to encourage a guest to book a different property if that would align better with existing bookings. How these things get adjusted and how much also depends upon the popularity of the dates in question.

These things don’t come in to play until after the booking calendars for each property start to fill up.

I took a look and we have a booking at Pleasant Oak Villa which departs on the 9th of April, which was the date you requested to arrive, so a booking there would leave no unbooked nights in between. Your dates at Breezy Oak Villa would leave a 4 or 5 night gap which would be very difficult to book.

So the rates are designed to encourage you to choose one property over the other, or cover off the lost revenue if you don’t. This works very well in our case because our properties are so similar to each other.

If your requested dates weren’t amongst the four weeks of the year with the absolute highest demand (and rates), or the existing bookings we have were for different dates that aligned better with yours, you wouldn’t see such a big difference.

Likewise, if you requested the same dates but a year or two in advance which haven’t been booked much yet, you would see very similar if not identical rates between properties.