VRBO Rate Automation. Fair warning
I am not the type of host who turns control over to anyone, like a PMS or property manager, especially when it come to pricing.
I got the email for "rate automation" and it actually looked like a good thing since they insist you can change your prices any time you want.
Since I only get 20% of my bookings from VRBO (80% from Air BB) I felt like I'd try it and what could go wrong?
For a few weeks, I checked the prices and they stated they only dropped my prices by $6 according to the best price in my comp set (nice 2 BR house downtown central coast Calif)
Suddenly, I got 5 bookings all in a row. Wow! From VRBO? OK!
I didn't check the prices since the money all goes into savings and auto pays the mortgage.
Then I got two requests, one right after the other, that wanted to have 1. a birthday party, and 2. a family reunion. Both of these bookers had 4.5 stars! I've literally never seen a guests with less than 5 stars (which I know is an exaggeration on VRBO's part)
I declined and checked my pricing. My God! It was 20% less than normal and they had changed my comp set from a 2 BR house close to town, to a bunch of one room hotel rooms.
On further inspection, I discovered they can change their parameters "every 48 hours"! They also claim that it's easy to change the prices, it's NOT. It's a tedious process of changing them one by one!
Needless to say, I hid my listing for now because after looking for 10 minutes on how to turn this thing off, I still can't figure it out.
Just sayin'