Here is the transcript of the video:
“Hello and welcome to the J'poster Complet , the channel that helps seasonal rental owners and seasonal accommodation managers become serene and ultra-profitable entrepreneurs. Today I'm going to talk to you about the last minute. We often ask ourselves the question: should we offer last minute discounts? Many tools on the market will encourage you to do this, pricing algorithms, for example. You also have channel managers who will encourage you to do it. In any case, there are the small boxes that exist and then we even have the platforms which, in the same way, encourage us to cut prices at the last minute, to put a reduction percentage which will automatically reduce the pricing. In relation to this, there are several points of vigilance. The first thing is that putting a reduction percentage that will always be the same all year round is almost certainly detrimental. Since you will not be able to have a discernment according to the performance of the good at the moment, depending on the period in which we are. Typically, during a period of very high demand, or even an event period, even if at the last minute you do not have a rental, it is a safe bet that you will find it, since the city is gradually becoming saturated and with the smaller number of advertisements which remains available, even at the last minute, you can find clients who are desperate to rent a room in your city or in the neighborhood to be able to go to this event in question or because the period is very strong. So, during these periods, it's really like a beginner's mistake, we'll say, in our revenue management profession, to put a last minute reduction on a period of high demand.
There is another pitfall to avoid falling into, and that is during periods of low demand. If we need to put reductions on our pricing at the last minute all year round because it is not rented, that probably means that our pricing is poorly designed to begin with. So, it's really important to be able to address the subject, build your revenue management strategy step by step on all the stages that are key in building a revenue management strategy. This means studying your history, therefore having the revenue management indicators on the history, studying the competition, studying market data, forecasting the level of demand to come in the future by period. What days and weeks will be weak, medium, strong, very strong, event-related? Study the events also in the calendar and with all these elements, be able to build a real revenue management strategy. So, that's super important and therefore it means, in other words, that putting a discount on the last minute, there are few situations in which it will be a good idea. We can still have situations on which we had really built the strategy and then we realize that the hypotheses we made were not the right ones and perhaps that the price we had positioned was too optimistic. We tried, but it didn't work. In these cases, if we see that it is a strategy that is perhaps too optimistic, we must readjust and in this situation, rather than lowering our prices, it may be interesting to put on a promotion. It can be the last minute promotion category in the systems, but it can also simply be a classic promotion. In any case, it's interesting that there is a price crossed out on the pricing so that it can catch the traveler's eye, leave him with the impression he has, not even an impression but to make him feel that he has the opportunity to really have something that is worth more than the price at which it is currently displayed and obviously make him want to convert and buy to seize this opportunity.
So, these cases exist, but they are not at all the most frequent cases, it is not at all the majority of the time on which we will basically put a last minute promotion. And here, we are very far from what we sometimes hear in our field of activity, to say or imply that it is very good management to always have, whatever happens, a reduction to slash prices at the last minute. This is not the case in our profession anyway. This is really not what is recommended in revenue management. There you go, I hope that this could have provided you with some keys to this and shed a little light on this subject which is somewhat understood as being a good practice, when in reality, it is a false -friend. If you liked this video, don't hesitate to share with me in the comments what you thought of it and how you manage it. It's interesting to discuss it. Give a little thumbs up too, it supports our work and it also supports the time we spend making videos on the channel to be able to help you obviously for free. And then, well, until then, I'll see you soon for the next video. »