Type: Villas
Count: 80+
Geo: Multiple Locations
Area: Beaches
PMS: Avantio
About Villa Rentals
TheoHaris Mihailidis started his vacation rental company, Villa Rentals, in 2009. He built four villas, intending to sell three and keep one as a summer house. He became a part-time property manager for the three unsold properties while holding down his full-time position as an IT consultant.
Haris once double-booked one of his properties in 2016 and had to call in a favor from his neighbor, who owned five villas to accommodate his guests. Realizing the potential in converting his otherwise empty villas into vacation rentals, his neighbor hired Haris as the property manager for his properties.
Haris became a full-time property manager in 2017 and now manages 80+ properties in Greece, 27+ properties in Athens, and 30+ properties on Pyros Island. Most of these properties are Villas along the coastal line and one of them is a three-story townhouse in a medieval city in South Greece. Haris recently onboarded larger villas that are upscale properties which he is pitching to luxury websites and endorsing as locations for short retreats. Keep reading to know more about how they find PriceLabs helpful in terms of the features that we offer and the revenue output.
Challenges faced by Haris before PriceLabs
1. Using multiple property management tools for every little task led to higher costs.
TheoHaris Mihailidis realized the importance of using property management tools to manage his bookings and revenue. He couldn’t find a comprehensive solution that could match his pricing needs while being affordable. Due to this, he bought a lot of solutions, which led to an increase in his cost. This also made it difficult for him to navigate them.
2. Manually keeping track of Excel pricing was getting tedious as his business grew.
Haris maintained an Excel spreadsheet where he would maintain the pricing of the properties after consulting with the owners. He would then manually upload those prices to the property management system, where he would program the discounts according to the length of stay every two weeks. For his apartments in Athens, he used Airbnb Smart Pricing to dynamically price his properties because he got most of the bookings from Airbnb.
Every morning, a dedicated resource would upload and change the prices of various properties on the PMS according to the ongoing trends in the vicinity of those properties. Haris realized that this process was very time-consuming and tedious. Also, since the prices of the properties were not data-backed, he was charging far less for the listings and losing out on potential revenue.
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“After we started using PriceLabs, we got some amazing bookings because there was some heart surgeon conference and PriceLabs rated our Villas for 220 euros when our base price was 80 euros. ”
– TheoHaris Mihailidis, Owner, Villa Rentals
How PriceLabs helped Haris
1. Using PriceLabs, he could do a lot with one solution that reduced his costs.
Haris met PriceLabs representatives at the VRMA conference in Paris in 2018. He loved that he could try out the product with the one-month free subscription. The affordability of PriceLabs’ subscription was another major factor that especially because PriceLabs have pricing plans according to the number of properties. Also, he was overspending on unnecessary tools earlier, so he wanted to ensure that the tool he was picking was worth his time and effort.
2. A data-backed, automated pricing strategy allowed him to identify peak season and earn more during high demand.
Using PriceLabs’ dynamic pricing, he was able to identify a spike in bookings caused by various events in his vicinity, like conferences and festivals, which he was otherwise unaware of. He found out that he was getting bookings for a much higher amount than before. For example, during a heart surgeon conference, his properties were being booked for 200 Euros when he had kept a base price of 80 Euros.
Haris also likes the multi-calendar feature of PriceLabs, where he can see the occupancy of all his listings in one place. The color-coding allows him to see how each of his listings performs. If any of his properties are getting fewer bookings, he can see it on the calendar and then analyze its performance in detail using Pricelabs’ Market Dashboard. He then makes the necessary adjustments to the customizations to enhance the listings’ performance.
3. PriceLabs customer support and product webinars helped Haris set suitable customizations and get the maximum bookings.
The customer support of PriceLabs helped him understand how different product features can be used to his benefit. He could analyze his listing’s performance, compare it to the overall market performance, set customization to get the most bookings for his villas for the best price, and much more. He attended the regular webinars conducted by PriceLabs, which helped him stay updated about every new feature and use case. For Haris, understanding how the product works were essential for him to use it most effectively and optimize his bookings and revenue.
“Every two weeks, we would manually analyze the market trends and discount the nightly rate of the Villas accordingly. Every morning my colleague used to change the prices on the PMS according to the availability of the Villas. We were losing out on time and money with this method. I don’t know how we were living without PriceLabs before.“
– TheoHaris Mihailidis, Owner, Villa Rentals.gr
Result
As his business grew, Haris’ previous methods of managing his pricing manually were becoming increasingly tedious. He was overspending on multiple property management tools that weren’t offering value for money. His pricing strategy was also not backed by data, so he was unaware of price hikes in the market in case of events like heart surgeon conferences, the Athens marathon, etc.
With PriceLabs, Haris found a product that first allowed him to see its value by providing a free one-month trial. The subscription fee is also very affordable, especially because PriceLabs have pricing plans according to the number of properties. The dynamic pricing solutions automated his pricing and suggested data-backed prices that ensured he was never leaving money on the table because of keeping lower prices during peak seasons. With the PriceLabs multi-calendar, he could see the occupancy of all his listings in one place. The Market Dashboard facilitated him to make comprehensive market analyses and competitively price his properties to optimize his revenue.
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