How to Start & Run a B&B BandBED2eBook-1 | Page 26

Seasonal Pricing
This is very basic, almost universal in the tourism industry, and easy for customers to
understand. Most hotels and B&Bs have an out of season, shoulder season and high
season rate, and some may have different rates for almost every month of the year.
Always remember the “keep it simple” part of our equation, though. Don’t forget that
you, your partner and anyone else who handles booking enquiries needs to have the
pricing confidently on the tip of the tongue. Any confusion, or a proliferation of
different rates to quote to each enquirer, will not encourage people to book with you.
As with all our pricing tips, you need to start with the actual seasonality of your own
marketplace – ie your location and type of accommodation. If you are a city-centre
B&B and get a lot of business customers, your seasonality will probably be much flatter
and year-round than for a tourist B&B in a seaside resort. The seaside B&B may well
have extreme seasonality, being very busy for Easter, May half-term and the Summer
holidays but virtually dead the rest of the year. If this describes your business, then
you must charge the maximum you can in your high season consistent with virtually
full occupancy (you cannot afford empty rooms in this period), and take your prices as
low as they need to go out of season to achieve viable occupancy. You will probably
find it not worth staying open at all in very low season (November to February, for
instance).
Differential weekend / midweek pricing
How important this is to you will again depend on your location and clientele. If
leisure short breaks are your mainstay (as they would be typically for a country B&B,
for instance), then you will probably find no difficulty filling Friday and Saturday
nights, but will struggle to get bookings for Sunday to Thursday. Here, you should
end up with a sharp price differential. B&Bs in town or city locations, on the other
hand, may attract some non-leisure clientele – ie businesspeople staying for business
reasons. The business market is very different to the leisure market, most obviously in
being a midweek market. If you get business bookings, these will typically be
midweek, for one night, in single occupancy. If you run a townhouse B&B in a
business district, business bookings may be your mainstay and in this case, you will
have to price down weekends to try to encourage some weekend occupancy.
Special prices for key dates
In the “leisure” market, bank holidays will be popular. There may also be some local
events which are popular – for instance, the International Festival in Edinburgh, the
Chelsea Flower Show in London, and many other smaller festivals, shows and events
which result in increased localized demand. We have an example in Sherborne, the
Dorset town where our own B&B is based. Here in the third week of August for a few
years, the “IronMan UK” Triathlon has taken place, bringing 1500 athletes and their
families, friends and spectators to a town with only three hotels and a handful of B&Bs.
Consequently, a higher price could be obtained for the four or five days of the event
than the rest of the year.
You may not want to raise your price above your highest season rate for an event in
high season, but you would lose potential revenue if you priced a special date during
low season at the low season rate. In such a case, you may want to say for instance
“high season is July, August, Easter, May half-term and the dates of the town festival”.
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