Historical Anchoring is a powerful feature designed to enhance pricing strategies by leveraging previous booking data. By anchoring prices to past performance, users can ensure their listings are priced competitively while protecting against underpricing.
So, how does Historical Anchoring work?
It looks at the historical booked dates and puts a weight on how much of that historical booked price you want to follow.
For example, the current price on December 25, 2024, is $500 but the previous year, you got booked at $1,000 on December 25, 2023. If you set the historical anchoring percentage as 100%, it will follow the historical booked price at 100%, making it $1,000 on December 25, 2024.
Things to note with the Historical Anchoring
It will only increase your pricing recommendations.
It only considers bookings in the last 12 months.
It will not draw any signals from last year's asking rates.
How to set up the Historical Anchoring
Historical anchoring default
Establish a global historical anchoring by inputting the desired percentage below the Historical anchoring default and clicking the Save Change in the bottom left corner.
To match the previous year's booked rates, you would want to input 100%. Anything below 100% will be a blend between the previous year's booked rates and the pricing engine's recommendation.
Day of week rules
Set a historical anchoring by day of the week. This feature allows more control over which day of the week will be impacted more or less by the historical booked dates.
Ways to use this rule
Let's say you're confident you can attain similar revenue for this year's weekends but unsure about how weekdays will be booked. Instead of inputting 100% for weekdays, you can drop the percentage much lower to ensure you're using the pricing engine's recommendation (which is based on current market conditions), while keeping weekends similar to last year's booked rates!
Monthly rules
This feature allows you to configure the Historical Anchorings' whole month or break it down to the day of the week for a particular month(s). It will supersede the Day of Week rules set for your listing.
For example, if you wish to implement different historical anchorings for January (high season), you can customize it accordingly. That way, you could have different anchorings for your High/Low/Shoulder seasons.
Click the "Add new rule +" button, then select January.
To break it down to the day of the week, click the "Specify by day of week" button.
Click the Save Change button on the lower left side of the page.
Time-based rules
Create rules to automatically adjust the historical anchoring for stay dates within and beyond a specific number of days.
Please note: Time-based rules will override the monthly rules, day of week, and the historical anchoring default.
Click the "Add new rule +" button.
Select Within or After.
Add the number of days and percentage value.
Click the Save change button on the lower left of the page.
Specify by month
This feature will allow you to set Time-based Historical Anchoring for certain month(s). For example, if you want the Time-based Historical Anchoring to be applicable for December only:
Click the Specify by month button on top of the Time-based historical anchoring requirements.
Click December from the months that will appear on top of the Time-based historical anchoring requirements.
Click the Save change button on the lower left of the page.
Specify by day of week
This feature will allow you to set the Time-based historical anchoring for a certain day(s) of the week.
Click the Specify by day of week button on top of the Time-based historical anchoring requirements.
Then set the historical anchoring percentage for each day of the week.
Click the Save change button on the lower left of the page.
Ways to use this rule
Let's say you want to utilize the Historical Anchoring setting but as the stay date approaches and the date is still available, you want to rely less on the previous year's booked rate and more on the pricing engine's recommendation.
You can set up Time-based rules where the Anchoring percentage drops as the stay date approaches. For example, you could have it set as:
Within 60 days - 80%
Within 30 days - 50%
Within 14 days - 25%
Within 10 days - 10%
Date-specific rules
Add Historical Anchoring rules for specific date ranges, such as holidays or events. Date-specific rules will override all rules (Time-based, Monthly, Day of week, and the default global).
Click the "Add new rule +" button.
Select the date range and enter the anchoring percentage. If you want the Date-Specific Minimum Stay to be a recurring rule, you can check the Yearly box.
To break it down to the day of the week, click the "Specify by day of week" button.
Click the Save change button on the lower left of the page.