Outdoorsy’s host dashboard is the key that turns the ignition to our RV rental businesses. Without the tools in there, we’d lose out on features that help us keep calendars in order, assure trust and safety on rental requests, manage guest communications, and more.
By now you’ve probably heard Outdoorsy loaded new tools into host dashboards ahead of the new year. Hopefully you’ve had the chance to test drive a few of them because they are game changers for how you can see what’s happening in your business.
For this post, we’d like to take a deep dive into one feature in particular — the profit plan tab. It’s the one-stop shop for all the pullable levers to maximize revenue and bookings. Let’s check it out:
The Big Idea Behind Profit Plan Tab
One of the key strategies for business growth in the sharing economy (or any economy for that matter) is a plan for rolling with the waves of customer demand.
For example, we know certain holidays like Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day see a surge in demand for RVs. This demand tightens available supply, meaning we hosts can usually increase our nightly rate over these weekends.
Guests who book longer trips are generally helpful for us hosts too because it reduces our turnover load and associated expenses.
The profit plan tab is designed to bring these pricing tools and more into one place so you can envision exactly how your profit strategy is unfolding. It also allows you to easily toggle rules on and off so you can proactively respond to business trends.
Pieces of the Profit Plan: Nightly Rate Adjustment
Your profit plan tab is built on rules that you can customize to grow your business. The first rule you’ll find in this tab is the nightly rate adjustment.
The nightly rate adjustment encourages you to build rules to maximize demand and earnings depending on the time of year. By getting to know the high-demand seasons in your area and creating nightly rate increases for those times, you won’t leave money on the table.
Events like NASCAR races and music festivals usually correspond with an uptick in RV rental demand. Use the nightly rate tool to adjust pricing for those specific windows.
On the flip side, you can also adjust your nightly rates down during specific date ranges to make yourself more competitive when rental demand dips in your area.
Finally, the repeats annually feature ensures that seasonal or event-related price increases happen automatically every year. Simply check the box next to ‘repeat this rule annually’ (step #3 in the pic above), and your rule will repeat annually for the selected shopping/traveling date range.
Pieces of the Profit Plan: Length of Stay Discount
The next rule the profit plan tab puts front and center is the length of stay discount. We’ve always had this option, but we can now see how this discount fits into the larger picture.
For example, you may know of a festival coming to your area that lasts nearly a week. This could be a great time to incentivize renters to book longer while simultaneously using the nightly rate adjustment rule to bump up your pricing for that time.
That way, you save on multiple turnovers and your renter probably gets a better deal than with other RV rentals around you.
And sometimes you just want to use this tool to match your business with the way you want it. Turnovers can be taxing and you might want to reduce the number of times you have to clean your RV in a season. Length of stay discounts are a great way to do that.
Pieces of the Profit Plan: Minimum Stay Adjustment
We’ve always had the option to set a minimum night rule so renters are required to book for a certain number of nights. Minimum stay adjustment is a new rule added to the profit plan tab that helps us be even more dynamic with this.
For example, let’s say your minimum night rule is currently set at five nights. You then get wind of a three day festival coming to your area that’s likely to surge demand for RV rentals.
No problem — you can simply program the minimum stay adjustment rule to create an exception for those dates that allows festival-goers to book for a shorter time. And because you also increased your nightly rate via a nightly rate adjustment (you did that, right? 😀you’ll make enough dough with the festival to cover a shorter-than-usual rental.
The new host tools in our dashboards are designed to help us steer our rental businesses to our desired destination. Whether you aspire to build a thriving rental fleet or take more RVing vacations in your family rig, putting the right profit plan in place is the way to get there.
