Will AI Pricing Work for My Hotel? Answers to Hoteliers’ Most Common Questions

Is my hotel too small for dynamic pricing? Is the AI just copying my competitors? Will I lose control of my rates? These are the questions we hear most from independent hoteliers, so we went straight to the people who answer them every day.

In our latest webinar, I sat down with two teammates who between them have spoken to hundreds of property owners:

• Amir joined Pricepoint when the team was just three people. In almost four years he’s worked across sales, onboarding and account management, spoken with more than 750 hotel owners and managers, and worked closely with over 150 of them.
• Arianna leads our customer support team. She joined two and a half years ago as an onboarding specialist, so she’s seen the customer journey from setup to day-to-day support.

To pick the topics, we went through our support tickets and the questions our sales team gets asked, and pulled out the most common ones. Here’s what Amir and Arianna had to say about each, from both the sales and the support side. You can watch the full webinar below.

1. “Will AI dynamic pricing work for my property?”

A common misconception is that dynamic pricing is only for big hotels. Owners of small, highly seasonal or unusual properties often assume it won’t work for them.

Amir doesn’t argue with the premise. “They have a very unique property in a unique market,” he said. “I’m actually on their side.” For an independent owner or GM, the property is their baby, and they do their research before choosing a system.

That uniqueness is exactly why Pricepoint starts with the property’s own data rather than the market. It doesn’t simply react to what the neighbour is charging. Instead, it works out what kind of property it’s dealing with:

• Does it get 10% of bookings at the last minute, or is it booked six months ahead?
• When does it sell out, and how far in advance?
• How much stronger are weekends than weekdays?

And that picture keeps changing. A new property might get almost no advance bookings in year one. Two years later, 30% of its bookings might come in a year ahead. When the system sees that shift, it changes strategy. “It’s not one strategy fits all,” Amir said. “Strategy is not static.”

He compares it to hiring an experienced revenue manager, one who has worked with over a thousand properties since Pricepoint was founded in 2018, and can draw on all of them when deciding what’s right for yours.

What happens after you sign up

On the support side, Arianna explained that tailoring starts with onboarding. The team pulls in your historical data, analyses it and proposes a setup: minimum and maximum prices, room categories and the configuration that fits your amenities.

Crucially, they don’t set it and walk away. “No one knows a property better than an owner, a manager, a GM,” she said. The team walks you through the setup, takes your feedback and adjusts until you meet in the middle. Then they keep monitoring performance. When results aren’t what was expected, it’s usually a setup issue, which means it’s fixable.

Why some owners think it isn’t working

Arianna sees two common reasons:

1. Judging on one metric. Looking only at the number of bookings, or only at ADR, gives a partial picture. The metric that matters is RevPAR (revenue per available room). Higher RevPAR can come from more bookings at a lower ADR, or fewer bookings at a higher one.
2. Judging too early. “You don’t see a flower blooming from one day to the next,” she said. Some properties see results within a week. Most see them within the first trial month.

2. “How does the AI decide prices? Is it just copying my competitors?”

No. “We have a saying at our company: lead, not follow,” Amir said. Pricepoint sets prices in three stages.

1. Learn the property. It analyses historical data: typical occupancy on a random Tuesday versus a Friday, how March compares to May, seasonality and the usual booking window.
2. Forecast and strategise. From that history it simulates what’s likely to happen, for example the occupancy you should expect for March by the time you’re in January. It then builds a day-by-day strategy for each room type. On Valentine’s Day, say, kings and queens might always sell out while doubles stay empty, so a booking for one is worth more than a booking for the other.
3. React in real time. This is the step that sets it apart. Not every year looks like the last, so the system constantly watches live signals: changes in occupancy, pace, booking window, seasonality, the market and your inventory, such as blocked units or rooms under renovation.

Each time a new signal arrives, Pricepoint recalculates the probabilities, re-forecasts, and pushes a new optimal price to your PMS or channel manager. For a property with just 20 units, that adds up to about 200 updates a day.

Amir gave two examples of how those decisions play out:

• A competitor drops prices for next week, but you’re at 95% occupancy and historically sell out. The system may leave your price alone.
• A new advance booking confirms you’re on track to sell out that date. The system may raise prices.

“Rules are really something that are outdated,” Amir said. The approach is driven by data, both old and new, with a team of data scientists working to improve the system day by day.

3. “Why does this price look too high, or too low?”

This concern is especially common for hoteliers moving from static rates to dynamic pricing. Prices now move within a range, and that takes getting used to. Arianna’s advice: raise it with us whenever it comes up. “That’s what we’re here for,” she said. The team can show you exactly what’s driving the price.

She sees three main causes.

Pricing close to check-in. Owners often expect a certain pattern as the date approaches. But Pricepoint looks at what is actually happening for that date and that specific room. You might be at 80% occupancy, yet a particular room hasn’t had a booking in two weeks. In that case the system may price more conservatively to sell it. “It’s not a general thing for the entire property,” Arianna said. Two rooms in the same hotel can follow completely different patterns.

Events priced by hand. Owners sometimes set event prices too high or too low. A conference in the city doesn’t help you if your property isn’t near the venue. If demand doesn’t materialise, Pricepoint will signal that the price isn’t where it should be. It’s an easy fix.

A price range that’s too narrow. If there isn’t enough space between your minimum price and your starting price, Pricepoint has no room to move. Give it room to fluctuate so it can find the sweet spot that brings in bookings.

It all comes back to trust. “It’s very difficult to let go,” Arianna said, especially for owners used to checking prices several times a day. “But if you give us that chance, we will prove to you why Pricepoint is one of the best.”

4. “Will I still be in control of my prices?”

Yes. Handing pricing to an AI feels like a big step, and Amir is clear that revenue isn’t the only goal. You may be building a brand, or want to avoid attracting guests who aren’t the right fit. So you set the guardrails:

• Minimum rates for each room type, set month by month and separately for weekdays and weekends. You can even go down to day-by-day minimums, though we don’t recommend it.
• Maximum rates, so prices never climb to a level that puts guests off or leads to complaints and bad reviews.
• Change them any time. You might accept a lower floor in year one to get heads in beds, then raise it as your brand grows. “It’s not that you set it up one time and you’re stuck there,” Amir said. “You can change it at any point.”

Arianna added that trusting Pricepoint doesn’t mean letting go completely. During onboarding, the team shows you how the platform works and where to make manual changes, so you know exactly where to go if you need to.

That said, manual adjustments shouldn’t be a daily habit. “If you find yourself having to constantly make manual adjustments, there’s something wrong in the setup,” she said. And if you need to raise prices for a period, change your minimum or maximum, or adjust the uplift for an event, support is there to help.

The one thing to remember

We closed by asking each of them for a single takeaway.

Amir: Pricepoint exists to help independent properties. It doesn’t just follow the market or apply generic revenue management rules. It prices for your property, within limits you’re comfortable with. And you’re not on your own: onboarding gets you set up for success from day one, while revenue success, account managers and support keep things on track over time. “Just like you’re trying to build a brand, we’re also here trying to build a brand,” he said.

Arianna: Before you override a price, ask us why it’s there. “There’s almost always a reason why that price is there, and we’ll show you which factor moved it.” It all comes back to trust.

Have a question we didn’t cover? Get in touch with our team and we’ll walk you through how Pricepoint would work for your property.