Dynamic Pricing — Feature Guide

What dynamic pricing does

A group enquiry for a quiet Tuesday and the same enquiry for your busiest night of the
year should not be quoted the same rate. Dynamic pricing is where you decide how much
difference that makes — once, and applied consistently everywhere.

It works on bedroom rates. Each rule takes a starting rate, moves it according to how
much of your remaining inventory the enquiry would take, and holds the result inside
limits you set. Meeting rooms, food and beverage, and anything a person quotes by hand
are untouched.

You will find it under Rates & Products › Dynamic pricing, with three tabs: Venues,
Organisation rules, and a Rate checker for trying an enquiry against a venue without
saving anything.

One baseline, real exceptions

Write the rules once for the organisation and every venue follows them. A venue that
genuinely differs — a city hotel that fills midweek, a resort that fills in July — takes its
own copy and goes its own way.

Each venue carries three separate decisions, and none of them moves another.

A venue that overrides stops receiving later improvements to the organisation rules — so override the hotels that genuinely need it, not the ones you are still tuning. Bulk actions apply to everything the current filter is showing, not just the rows on screen, so set the filter first and read the count before you act. 

Where the starting rate comes from

A rule does not look rates up for you. It takes a starting rate and adjusts it, and each rule says where that starting rate comes from.

Manual. A rate you type on the rule itself — the same figure everywhere the rule applies. Predictable, easy to explain, and the right choice for a group rate you already negotiate at a fixed number, or for a venue that is not yet connected to a PMS.

Venue default. The venue's own default bedroom rate, read from the PMS for the room type being quoted. Each hotel starts from its own commercial rate, so a single organisation-wide rule produces a different quote at every property. This is the option to reach for once your venues are connected.

If a venue-default rule is used and that rate is not available for the stay, the enquiry goes to a person rather than out at an older price. A quote that is sent automatically is always built on a rate you currently sell. 

How the rate responds to demand

Every rule names one of three models — how the rate behaves as your rooms fill.

Stepped. A fixed uplift per occupancy band. Nothing moves until the hotel crosses a threshold you set, then the rate steps up: "from 70 % sold, add 5 %". The most predictable of the three, and the easiest to explain to a revenue team or to a customer who asks why a rate changed.

Linear. A steady climb. The uplift rises in proportion to how much of the remaining inventory the enquiry takes — a request for twice as many rooms moves the rate twice as far. Responsive, without surprises.

Exponential. Compounding. Small requests barely move the rate, larger ones move it sharply, and the effect accelerates as your rooms run out. The model that protects your last rooms hardest, and the one that most needs a maximum set.

Linear and exponential both read the same thing: the share of what is left that this enquiry would take. An inventory window factor lets you soften that — the larger you set it, the gentler the response. Stepped reads something different: how full the hotel already is, whatever the size of the request.

All three measure on the peak night of the stay — the single night the group needs most rooms — so a booking is never priced off a quiet night at one end of it. 

Keeping rates inside your limits

Two limits sit in front of every rule, and they answer different questions.

Minimum and maximum uplift bound how far the rate may move from where it started — "never more than 25 % above the base rate". Rate floor and ceiling bound the number itself — "never below £120, never above £400". The uplift limits are applied first, then the floor and ceiling, so a floor can still lift a rate that the uplift cap had held down.

Set a maximum on every rule that prices. Once quoting is automatic that number reaches a guest unread, and the only other limit is the curve itself. 

Which rule applies to an enquiry

One rule prices an enquiry. Rules never blend, so the rate always traces back to a single rule you can open and read.

Each rule can be narrowed by dates, days of the week and room types; leaving any of those empty means "all", which is deliberate. The whole stay must match: every night inside the date range and weekday selection, every room type requested covered by the rule. A rule for weekends does not part-price a Friday-to-Monday stay — it simply does not apply to it.

Where more than one rule still matches, priority decides which one prices the enquiry.

So keep one broadly scoped rule as the catch-all beneath your specific ones. A rule set where every rule is narrowly scoped can leave an enquiry matching nothing, and an enquiry that matches nothing goes to a person rather than out at the base rate. 

Before you switch a venue on

1. Give the venue at least one active rule.

2. Set a maximum uplift on every rule that prices.

3. Keep one broadly scoped catch-all rule beneath the specific ones.

4. Run the Rate checker on real dates, including one nearly-full night, and confirm you would be happy to send that rate unread.

5. Switch the venue on, then point its Instant Quote settings at dynamic pricing. 

Working with Instant Quote

Instant Quote decides whether to answer an enquiry. Dynamic pricing decides what number the answer carries. Each venue's Instant Quote settings name one source for bedroom rates. 

Set dynamic pricing up before you turn Instant Quote on at a venue. Pricing is read before the rules are evaluated, so a venue that cannot yet produce a rate hands every enquiry to a person — which looks like a broken feature rather than an unconfigured one.

When dynamic pricing cannot produce a rate — the venue is switched off, no rule matches the stay, or the underlying rate is unavailable — the enquiry is handed to a person and the venue is emailed with the reason, so nothing sits waiting unnoticed.

Afterwards, the Automation tab on the booking shows exactly what happened: which rule priced it, the inventory it was working from, and for each room type the starting rate, the quoted rate and the uplift between them.