What the county fair taught me about pricing

Every year our county has a fair, and every year the motels around it learn the same lesson at a different speed. Price too early and too low, and you sell out your best weekend at your worst price. Price too high, and you watch cars drive past your sign to the place twenty minutes out.

The mistake is not the number. The mistake is setting the number once, in May, and never looking again while the weekend fills up around you. A fair weekend is not one decision — it is a price that should move as rooms disappear, as the weekend gets closer, and as you see whether this year is a big year or a quiet one.

That is the thinking behind Otto, Innkeep's pricing manager. I set the floor I will never go below and the ceiling I am comfortable at, I lock any night I want to price by hand, and Otto works inside those lines and tells me why in one sentence. On fair weekend that sounds like: rooms are going, the weekend is close, here is the new price. I approve it in seconds, or change it. Mostly, I don't change it — because the watching was always the hard part, not the deciding.

You do not need a revenue department. You need someone — or something — still paying attention to your prices on the Thursday before the fair.

— Ravin Bhakta