Right Price, Right Season

A host running 15 Ipoh Airbnb listings priced them with one flat seasonal rule. That single rule was leaving about RM254,138 a year on the table, roughly 9.5% of profit, with occupancy unchanged.

One rule cannot fit a portfolio where a studio and a three-bedroom apartment react to price in opposite ways. The question was how occupancy responds to nightly rate for each property and season, and what rate earns the most.

The analysis covers 16,440 listing-nights across three years. Price sensitivity splits hard by room type: a 10% rate rise costs a studio about 21 bookings in 100, a three-bedroom only about 8. It also shifts by season, with guests least sensitive in the peak months (December, February, May) and most sensitive in the value months (November, March).

The estimate is a difference-in-differences read, using listing fixed effects and a weekend control so the price effect is separated from the busy-season demand that moves alongside it. The method recovers a known elasticity with a mean error of 0.224 against 0.713 for a naive price-vs-occupancy read, 3.2 times closer, and lands inside the 95% interval in all 12 type-season cells.

Of the 45 listing-and-season prices, 23 should rise and 22 should fall:

• Studios come down to win back empty nights, most steeply in the value season.
• Two and three-bedroom units go up, the shoulder season first.
• Grand Family Retreat (3BR) alone adds about RM26,571 a year.

The interesting part is that most of the gain hides in the ordinary shoulder months, not the obvious peak, because that is where the larger units are most underpriced.

The recommendation is to price each listing to its own elasticity by season, and to start with the larger units in the shoulder months.