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Become a partner →Owner Michael Craven set out to prove Pricepoint's results were smaller than they looked. Auditing years of data at his original hotel in Pass Christian, Mississippi, he found revenue running 2.25 times higher.
2.25x: revenue at Hotel Whiskey in Pass Christian with Pricepoint vs the years before, from the owner's own multi-year audit
24.1% increase in ADR at Hotel Whiskey in Pass Christian, 2021 to 2023
Company: Whiskey Properties — a family-run group of boutique hotels and cabins on the Mississippi Gulf Coast
Properties: three Hotel Whiskey locations, including the original in Pass Christian, and Whiskey On The River cabin retreat
Challenge: Prices pegged to a nearby competitor and reviewed once a month
Solution: Pricepoint automated pricing, with the owner setting strategy and Pricepoint executing it every day
On Pricepoint since: 2021
Owner Michael Craven set out to prove the results were smaller than they looked. He proved himself wrong.
“My first thought when I realized how much revenue had improved with Pricepoint was: Oh no, Pricepoint could really charge us a lot more.” — Michael Craven, Owner, Whiskey Properties
Whiskey Properties started as a single boutique hotel in Pass Christian, Mississippi. It has since grown to three Hotel Whiskey locations along the coast, plus a cabin retreat called Whiskey On The River. It's a family operation: Michael handles finance and business development, and his brother handles construction.
The business runs on a model many independent operators will recognise: part hotel, part short-term rental, by design. Guests get hotel conveniences like easy online booking and 24-hour customer service, without the overhead of a full-service property — no front desk, no continental breakfast. That lower cost structure let Whiskey Properties compete with a much larger, 150-room branded hotel nearby while keeping the boutique feel that brings guests back.
Michael is meticulous about his books. One day, working on pricing, he realised he had enough historical data to check his memory of how much Pricepoint had helped, instead of trusting his gut. He expected the number to come down to earth.
“My memory of it was that the first year was a pretty dramatic jump. I would have guessed somewhere in the range of about 50%. Again, I was like, that can't be right, it's too much of an improvement.” — Michael Craven
It didn't come down. Comparing four to five years of Pass Christian data with Pricepoint against one to two years before it, Michael found revenue was running 2.25 times higher, well past what he had estimated.
Before Pricepoint, the nearby competitor was the pricing strategy. Whiskey Properties pegged its rates to it: a little higher when nearly full, a little lower when vacant, reviewed about once a month because the competitor rarely moved.
“We really didn't know what we were doing. It was like double ignorance. They didn't know and we thought they did, and so we really didn't know.” — Michael Craven
Pricepoint came as the built-in revenue management option when Whiskey Properties switched property management systems. With guidance from Pricepoint’s onboarding team, Michael had everything configured and running in no time.
“Onboarding was really quick and easy. It doesn't get any easier than that.” — Michael Craven
Michael still sets the strategy, including how aggressive to be and how to position each property. The change is in who carries it out day to day. Pricepoint adjusts rates continuously as demand shifts, which a once-a-month manual check could never do. That matters in small coastal towns, where there are few true competitors to compare against. Rather than copying whatever one nearby hotel charges, Pricepoint prices each property based on its own demand. Whiskey On The River is a good example: there was not a single comparable set of whole-cabin rentals in the area to benchmark against.
What keeps Michael convinced today has less to do with the audit and more to do with what happens whenever the team tries adjusting prices by hand: occupancy drops enough to erase any gain.
“We've been using Pricepoint long enough to know that if we increase prices manually, we'll see a drop in occupancy that would more than affect our revenue negatively. It's really quite comforting to have that kind of confidence in the software.” — Michael Craven
Michael checks in on Pricepoint about once a week. The platform shows him which pricing calls it's making and why, so he can weigh them against what he and his team know about local demand.
Does Pricepoint replace the need for someone managing revenue?
No. Michael still sets the pricing strategy for each property. Pricepoint handles the day-to-day execution that used to mean checking a competitor's rates once a month.
How long did implementation take?
Not long. With guidance from Pricepoint’s onboarding team, Michael had everything configured and running in no time.
Did Pricepoint require replacing the property management system?
No. Pricepoint integrates directly with Whiskey Properties' PMS.
