Can I set different rental prices for different months?

Use this article about Flatio's advanced pricing options to understand how they all work in practice. Examples provided!

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• How is the rent calculated when some price settings overlap?
• How does it work in practice?
• Where to set different prices for different periods?

Of course you can! On Flatio, you can set different prices for different periods, whether it’s for specific months or even some special short-time events.

In the default prices settings, you need to set a basic monthly price. It’s completely up to you whether you decide to use any of the advanced settings, although we highly recommend it. From the advanced options, you can choose to:

• set a seasonal rate for each calendar month,
• specify some custom rates for exact dates during which you want the price to be lower or higher (for example, on New Year’s Eve),
• set discounts based on reservation length.

If you allow short-term stays (up to 29 days) and prefer using different pricing than for longer stays, you can also activate short-term prices which will replace the default ones for short-term reservations. Activation can be done by setting up the prices under this section. The basic nightly price is mandatory and any advanced settings (seasonal rates, custom rates, or length-based discounts) are optional.

How is the rent calculated when some price settings overlap?

To calculate rental payments for a reservation, we’ve settled the priorities of each price type. The one with a higher priority always beats the one with a lower priority.

Their order, from the highest priority to the lowest one, is the following:

1. custom prices
2. seasonal prices
3. basic price

To settle the price for the reservation, first we’ll check if there are advanced prices set - custom prices (i.e., specific prices set only for a given period) have the highest priority and seasonal prices (i.e., prices for specific months) follow.

If the prices for all days of the reservation are not fully covered, for those we’ll use the mandatory basic price set by you. Please note that even though this base price is set for a whole month, we’ll divide it appropriately by the number of nights within the given month - in case of e.g. July it would be 30 - and operate with nightly prices for the missing dates.

How does it work in practice?

Let’s say you get a reservation request for a stay from June 1 to August 15. We consider it a mid-term reservation, meaning we’ll use the default rent settings operating with monthly prices.

Imagine that you have a basic monthly rental set at 1000 €. You only raise the rent via seasonal settings to 1200 € for the months of July (i.e. July 1 to July 31) and August (i.e. August 1 to August 31). On top of this, there is a special event in the city on July 14-17, which is specified by a specially higher nightly rate of 45 €.

Here’s how the payments will be calculated:

• June rate: Because you haven’t set any special price for June, the basic price of 1000 € will apply for that month. The tenant will stay for the whole month of June (29 nights), so he will pay the full price of 1000 €.
• July rate: In July, we have two crossing prices - the raised monthly rent of 1200 € for the month of July (30 nights), and the raised price of 45 € for 3 specific nights. Therefore, the total price the tenant will pay for July will be 1215 € ((1200 € / 30 nights * 27 nights)+(45 € * 3 nights)).
• August rate: For August, you raised the rate to 1200 € per month (30 nights), so since the tenant will stay for only 14 nights, he’ll pay 560 € (1200 € / 30 nights * 14 nights).

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you received a reservation shorter than 30 days and you had the short-term prices activated, we would calculate the rent based on the short-term price settings, operating directly with nightly prices instead of the monthly ones.

Where to set different prices for different periods?

To set up prices for your listing, you need to go to the My Rentals web app and:

1. In the Properties section, click on the specific listing’s detail.
2. On the newly shown menu on the left, select the Rental prices and duration section.
3. Click the "Default prices settings" button, fill out the default prices according to your preferences, and save the changes.
4. If you allow short-term stays and want to apply different prices for them, go back to the main Rental prices and duraction page, click the "Short-term prices settings" button to set them up properly.
   • After saving them, don’t forget to click the "Activate short-term prices" button to enable them so they can be applied to your short-term reservations.

To learn more about the price settings and how it all works, please visit this article.