Concert-Pricing Strategies That Led Us to a 250% ADR Increase: Tim Speicher

No one loves Taylor Swift more than a revenue manager. Room nights are never more valuable than when she is in town, so the pressure is on to deliver. However, with no historical comps for the concert nights, it can be tough to gauge what prices the market will bear. Rest assured, if you have enough time and good reporting, you will be set for a record-setting weekend.

While PriceLabs’ algorithm already considers events, demand, booking patterns, and more to recommend optimal prices, you can still customize settings based on your risk appetite and personal preferences.

Read on as I, Tim Speicher, share the exact strategies I used to boost ADR by 2.5 times for my client Guestit during the Taylor Swift concert in May 2024. I am a revenue manager from Washington, DC, with a global portfolio of listings. In this article, I’ll explain how adjusting rates and minimum stays helped me maximize revenue without relying on past data.

Note that the recommended rates in PriceLabs will be automatically optimized for the event, so make these adjustments only if you really want to. This strategy works best if you have a mid to large portfolio, at least 20 listings in a given area, but the bigger the better. Large portfolios receive a lot of feedback in the form of new bookings, so revenue managers with lots of listings can make more informed decisions as they adjust rates and minimum stays.

This strategy can be easily adapted for other peak itinerant events by adjusting the initial rate down to match a listing’s ADR record. Every other step applies.

Step-by-Step Approach

Here is a step-by-step guide to getting the most out of a concert in your city.

Start with High Rates and Stay Minimum

• Use a dynamic pricing algorithm like PriceLabs. Set your stay minimums and rates as soon as the concert is announced–ideally the same day. You want six months of lead time if possible.
• Set a minimum stay of four nights just for the nights of the event. Do not increase the minimum stays for the shoulder nights just before and after the peak nights. It can be very difficult to book these nights, so you will want a short minimum and low rates to capture demand.
• You can also check out the min-stay recommendations in PriceLabs to avoid manual work and create a custom min-stay profile that can be used for all such events.
• Inflate the suggested rate from your dynamic pricing system. Aim high. You want the initial rate you publish to be about 30% higher than the previous ADR record at the property. For Taylor’s concert in Stockholm, I began with a +60% increase on the suggested rate from PriceLabs.
• Do remember that PriceLabs will automatically suggest an increased rate for these dates, considering the demand. So inflate the rate only if you are confident and believe your rate should be even higher.
• Wait and watch market pickup. If market occupancy for concert nights hits 25% occupancy before you receive a booking, drop your rate inflation. Lower it 10pts per week until you receive a booking.

Lower Minimum Stay, not Rate, to Increase Demand

• Once you receive the first booking for those nights, let time pass. You should keep receiving reservations at your current rate. Do the math: If we pick up this same occupancy every week, how many weeks will it take to sell out? You should try to sell out in the final week of the booking window.
• Watch every booking as they come in. Often, guests will only attend one or two nights of the concert, leaving prime nights open to book. When this happens, remove the stay minimum you have in place for unbooked concert nights. This will allow you to preserve a high ADR for those nights.
• Once booking pace slows, or if you fall 30pts behind your comp occupancy rate for the nights in question, lower your minimum stay length by one. Pickup should resume that same week.
• Wait until pickup slows again and drop your minimum stay to 2 nights. If possible, lower the minimum to just one night if there is a one night gap between stays.

Lower Rate as Booking Window Closes

• If pickup slows after your minimum is at 2 nights, you need to drop your rate. This time, use market prices as a benchmark. If more than two weeks remain before the concert, price the nights at a 25% premium to what the nights yielded last year. If you do not have prior year stay data, price yourself 25% higher than your direct comps.
• With two weeks remaining, the booking window is really closing, so price yourself at a 10-15% premium over the prior year or comp ADR.
• For the final week of the booking window, match your prior year or comp ADR.
• If all goes well, you should hit 100% occupancy just as the booking window closes.

Case Study: Guestit in Stockholm, Sweden

We used this strategy with property manager Guestit for Taylor Swift’s concert on May 17, 18, and 19, 2024 in Stockholm. Guestit has ~400 properties throughout the city.

We used Neighborhood Data to understand and compare the performance with local competitors, Market Dashboards to create reports for the broader market and choose competitors, and Portfolio Analytics to measure the performance of the properties.

February 20 – Twelve Weeks Out From Concert

This listing is a Studio in central Stockholm. Over the winter and spring months, it had been commanding reservations of 500-850 SEK/night. Peak season was generally priced between 750 and 1500 SEK per night. Rates were typically between the 25th and 75th percentile in the market.

For Taylor Swift, however, we employed a 4000 SEK rate for the nights of the concert, around 2.5x higher than a typical “peak” night. This was achieved by implementing an additional 60% nightly rate override to our recommended rate.

Central Stockholm Studio

March 19 – Eight Weeks Out From Concert

The week of March 19, we began removing all minimum stay overrides from partially-booked concert nights. The original minimum stay override was 4 nights for May 17 – 19. If one or two of those nights booked, we removed the minimum stay override from the unbooked night to prioritize peak ADRs.

In the graphs above, we can see our average rate for our 1 bedrooms was nearly twice the market’s 90th percentile. It felt insanely high, and yet we were still seeing 20pts of occupancy pickup per week for concert nights. If we were not careful, we would sell out in just two weeks’ time. We took this as a sign that we were not overpriced and should be careful not to drop rates too far.

Stockholm Central One Bedroom Pricing & Pacing

Above: Guestit Stockholm One Bedroom listing Occupancy pacing and pickup vs Stockholm One Bedrooms. As of March 19, 2024. Source: PriceLabs

March 26 – Seven Weeks Out From Concert

After a week of applying the shorter stay minimum to partially booked nights, we saw occupancy pickup slow to only around 7pts. This put us on pace to sell out just as the booking window closed on May 17.

At this point, we did walk the rate down slightly. On March 19, our average rate for 1beds was just over 7,000 SEK for concert nights, and on March 26, we dropped to just under 7,000 SEK.

Stockholm Central One Bedroom Pricing & Pacing

Above: Guestit Stockholm One Bedroom listing Occupancy pacing and pickup vs Stockholm One Bedrooms. As of March 26, 2024. Source: PriceLabs

April 23 – Four Weeks Out From Concert

As the booking window closed, we saw pickup for Concert nights remain strong at about 10pts of occupancy per week. Because we were on pace to sell out with two weeks left in the booking window, we did not lower our rates, even as booking pace began to decline in late April.

Four weeks before the concert, we removed our 4 night minimum override for all concert nights, booked or unbooked.

Stockholm Central One Bedroom Pricing & Pacing

Above: Guestit Stockholm One Bedroom listing Occupancy pacing and pickup vs Stockholm One Bedrooms. As of April 23, 2024. Source: PriceLabs

May 7 – Two Weeks Out From Concert

Two weeks out from the concert we were essentially sold out. Still, we dropped rates slightly each week to help any owners who had not yet secured a booking find one.

Stockholm Central One Bedroom Pricing & Pacing

Above: Guestit Stockholm One Bedroom listing Occupancy pacing and pickup vs Stockholm One Bedrooms. As of May 7, 2024. Source: PriceLabs

Measuring Results with Supercomps

We were thrilled with the performance we saw from concert weekend, but we wanted to compare ourselves to the top performers in the market. So, we created a custom compset full of well-reviewed, high earning, and dynamically-priced listings near ours. We called this list the Supercomps.

Compset is a personalized filter that you can create and save. You can customize a Compset to make sure you are looking at the metrics and trends for only the relevant properties in any market.

This compset had an occupancy profile extremely similar to ours. We were both essentially sold out for the nights of the concert.

Guestit Central Stockholm 1BD Occupancy vs Supercomps: January 1 – September 15

Above: Guestit Central Stockholm 1 Bedroom listings (43 total) vs Comp Central Stockholm 1 Bedroom listings (311 total) Source: PriceLabs

But our aggressive rate-setting paid off. We were able to charge nearly double the Supercomp average.

Guestit Central Stockholm 1BD ADR vs Supercomps: January 1 – September 15

Above: Guestit Central Stockholm 1 Bedroom listings (43 total) vs Comp Central Stockholm 1 Bedroom listings (311 total) Source: PriceLabs

Meaning, we earned nearly twice as much as our best competitors over the highest-value nights on the calendar.

Guestit Central Stockholm 1BD RevPAR vs Supercomps: January 1 – September 15

Above: Guestit Central Stockholm 1 Bedroom listings (43 total) vs Comp Central Stockholm 1 Bedroom listings (311 total) Source: PriceLabs

We saw similar success among our Central Stockholm 2-bedroom listings as well:

Guestit Central Stockholm 2BD RevPAR vs Supercomps: January 1 – September 15

Above: Guestit Central Stockholm 2 Bedroom listings (17 total) vs Comp Central Stockholm 1 Bedroom listings (107 total) Source: PriceLabs

Our Studios also performed very well, but many new listings were launched just weeks before the concert, and could not enjoy a full booking window. Those listings could not command the same ADR as the rest of the portfolio.

Guestit Central Stockholm Studio RevPAR vs Market Comps: January 1 – September 15

Above: Guestit Central Stockholm Studio listings (99 total) vs Comp Central Stockholm 1 Bedroom listings (251 total) Source: PriceLabs

The effect was even more severe in neighborhoods outside of Central Stockholm that do not usually experience extreme dynamic demand. In South Stockholm, for example, Guestit’s 1 bedrooms earned roughly triple what the comps earned for concert nights.

Guestit South Stockholm 1BD RevPAR vs Market Comps: January 1 – September 15

Above: Guestit South Stockholm 1BD listings (10 total) vs Comp South Stockholm 1 Bedroom listings (456 total) Source: PriceLabs