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4 reasons why vacation rental hosts should use MarketMaker™

Learn how MarketMaker — the ultimate vacation rental pricing tool — helps you maximize revenue, improve performance, and stay competitive.

March 7, 2024

Revenue performance Traveler experience Vacation rentals

Setting the right price at the right time for your vacation rental property shouldn’t be a guessing game — it should be an informed, data-driven decision. Our complimentary revenue insights tool, MarketMaker, gives you real-time insights about your competition and performance that you can’t easily get elsewhere. With these competitive insights, you can make the necessary adjustments to your rates and overall offering to reflect current supply and demand, improving performance and building revenue.

$400M+

incremental value for our partners using Expedia Group’s revenue management insights.*

What is MarketMaker?

As the ultimate vacation rental pricing tool, MarketMaker calculates current market conditions for vacation rentals and uses real-time marketing data about your property, the properties nearby, and traveler search behavior to deliver valuable insights.

MarketMaker mines our up-to-the-minute market information to analyze billions of data points, including:
  • Real-time supply and demand data
  • Competitive rates of booked vs unbooked properties
  • Forecasted occupancy data
  • Average rates of similar properties
  • Booking lead times
  • Search data from this year and last
  • Historical listing performance

 

Read on for four reasons why vacation rental hosts should use MarketMaker to make more informed pricing decisions. 

A product graphic showing the MarketMaker dashboard with information about a property's rates by date and highlighting opportunities to adjust them.
MarketMaker provides real-time market data for property rates to help you make more informed pricing decisions.

1. Get real-time market data

Revenue management depends on access to robust data — and even better, real-time data. MarketMaker combines consumer demand behavior with traditional supply data to provide the most comprehensive industry insights available.

 

To provide a complete view of your market, MarketMaker displays key data including occupancy and forecasted occupancy levels, as well as traveler searches from the current year and previous year — all of which is available in your dashboard.

Icon framed within a circle, depicting analytics with a line graph on a computer monitor

2. Compare and compete with similar properties

Using information from similar properties — such as location, size, amenities, proximity to attractions, and traveler search behavior — MarketMaker identifies your unique competitive set, or those vacation rentals that offer travelers a similar experience to yours. The tool also analyzes traveler shopping behavior to zero in on your competition, and lets you edit the competitive set to add your own market expertise.

 

You can also easily see the average rates for your competitive set to help you determine the right pricing for your vacation rental, which can help your performance in search results.

"To be most successful with managing rates, you need to make sure that you’re looking at the right set of competitor rental properties."

Dr. Donna Green

Vacation Rental Owner

3. Keep rates competitive year-round

As market conditions change, so do your rates — this is known as dynamic pricing. MarketMaker notifies you of market changes and uncovers pricing opportunities for property owners so you can routinely adjust pricing to support your goals. You can use these opportunities to secure last-minute bookings, charge a higher rate during periods of higher demand, and more.

Icon framed within a circle, depicting a booking window on a calendar

Almost 60% of MarketMaker pricing opportunities suggest a property price increase, indicating that MarketMaker highlights opportunities for partners to increase their rates.**

Local events, holidays, and seasonality can affect travel demand in your location. To stay informed of important dates, MarketMaker displays a calendar of local events and holidays that may affect demand in your area.

4. Reach your revenue targets

MarketMaker provides the real-time insights and traveler search data you need to set strategic pricing and reach your revenue targets. In fact, properties leveraging MarketMaker insights at least twice in a quarter see, on average, a 6% increase in revenue.**

 

When you set your rate strategy in MarketMaker, you’ll start to receive alerts with pricing opportunities when market conditions change and your rates and goals no longer align.

Icon framed within a circle, depicting payments with a coin above an outstretched hand

As a revenue optimization tool, MarketMaker will also notify you of opportunities to reach your goals faster. For example, if your rate strategy is set to maximize revenue and there's high demand (many travelers searching in your area) but low supply (few available properties), the tool may suggest a rate increase.

Ready to get started?

Once you’ve completed onboarding, access the MarketMaker tool in your Vrbo dashboard using the menu on the left-hand side. From there, use MarketMaker to guide your pricing and property strategy, and start pricing like a pro.

How MarketMaker uses data

MarketMaker stores booking data for as long as it's useful to the tool — once the data is collected, it becomes part of the aggregated data set. While historical data is only part of the data set, it's critical for establishing seasonality and trends.

MarketMaker will never collect traveler contact information for bookings through channels outside of Expedia Group sites. MarketMaker does not collect guest names, emails, addresses, or phone numbers, nor does it collect property owner contact information.

Expedia markets to travelers who inquire and book through Expedia Group sites. We do not pull your customer data through the software integration in order to market to them.

Non-aggregated data will not be shared with any third parties outside of Expedia Group. Users of MarketMaker will see the data in aggregate form. We use this data to provide better insights in MarketMaker, improve the tool, and make better decisions about future tools for property managers.

Start pricing like a pro

Access the MarketMaker tool in your Vrbo dashboard and make data-driven vacation rental pricing decisions to improve performance and maximize revenue.
Access MarketMaker

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