Setting Prices and Inventory

This is the chapter you'll come back to most often. The Pricing sub-tab on the Decisions page is where you make the call that drives every other number — what to charge.

The pricing grid

The pricing table. Inventory decisions on the left, pricing decisions on the right, separated by a vertical spine.

The table has one row per day of the upcoming month. The columns split into two clear domains, separated by a 4-pixel vertical divider:

This split is important. Inventory and pricing are two different decisions:

• Pricing: what you charge
• Inventory: how many rooms you make available at that price

You can do clever things by treating them separately — for example, holding back a few premium rooms even on a strong day so that when corporate guests walk up at the last minute you have somewhere to put them.

Pre-populate from last month

You don't have to type 30 numbers every period. The Pricing tab has a Pre-populate action that copies prices from a previous month into the current month.

Two modes:

• By Date — Oct 5 → Nov 5 (same calendar day)
• By Day-of-Week — first Monday of Oct → first Monday of Nov

Day-of-week is usually better. Hotels behave on a weekly cycle (weekends ≠ weekdays), and matching weekdays to weekdays preserves that rhythm.

After pre-populating, you tweak.

How to think about price

The simulator's demand model isn't going to be revealed to you in detail — figuring out the right price is part of the learning. But here are the directional truths every successful hotel-team uses:

1. Demand responds to price

Lower price → more demand. Higher price → less demand. This is true at every hotel type, every season, every day. What changes is how strongly demand responds — and that's something you learn by experimenting.

2. Demand also responds to your product

Price is only half the equation. Two hotels charging the same $180 won't get the same demand if one has a spa and the other doesn't. Your amenities, your reputation, your service score, the channels you sell on — all of these are part of what guests are evaluating.

💡 Implication: You can charge more if your product is better. Don't price like a budget hotel if you've built a luxury one.

3. The market matters

How you price relative to your competitors matters more than your absolute number. If everyone else charges $200 and you charge $180, you look like a deal. If everyone else charges $160 and you charge $180, you look expensive.

The Market Intel tab is exactly where you check this.

4. There's a diminishing return on quality

If your service score, reputation, amenities, and channel mix are already excellent, paying for more of each only helps a little. Save the money. If those are weak, fixing them is one of the highest-return moves you can make.

Standard vs Premium rooms

Most hotels have two room types: Standard and Premium. They're priced separately and have separate inventory.

Pricing them

• Standard rate = your floor offering
• Premium rate = should clearly be higher (otherwise nobody books standard)

A common heuristic: premium is 20–40% above standard. Higher in luxury hotels, narrower in budget. Tune to taste.

Inventory: when to hold back

By default, all your rooms are available every day. You can hold some back by lowering the "available" number.

When does that make sense?

• Peak days where you expect to sell out anyway — hold a few premium rooms for last-minute walk-ups who pay top dollar
• High-value bookings expected — if you know a corporate group is bidding, leave room for them
• Maintenance / blocked rooms — if rooms are physically unusable

Most of the time, you should release everything. Holding back inventory you didn't need to costs you bookings.

Per-segment pricing (if your sim has this)

Some simulations turn on per-segment pricing — you can charge different rates to different guest segments (retail, advance purchase, corporate, etc.).

When this is on, you'll see extra columns in the pricing grid. The most common pattern:

Advance Purchase can be entered either as a fixed price or as a "% off Retail". Either way, when you submit, the engine stores a fixed price.

Locked cells in pace mode

If your simulation uses pace mode, days that have already been "processed" in earlier passes will be grayed out — you can no longer change them.

Past pace chunk days are locked. Hover for a tooltip explaining why.

This is intentional. Once bookings have been allocated for a day, the price for that day is set in stone. You can only change pricing for upcoming days.

Saving and submitting

There are two distinct actions:

Save often. Submit when you're sure.

Review & Submit. The 🏨 banner reminds you to also configure My Hotel before submitting.

Two important warnings on Submit Final

1. Unbid open RFPs — if there's an open RFP you haven't placed a bid on, the simulator will warn you with a modal. You can dismiss and submit anyway, but it's the engine asking "are you sure you want to skip this?"

   The unbid-RFP nag modal. Read it before clicking through.

2. My Hotel not configured — there's a banner asking whether you also reviewed your My Hotel decisions for the period.

Iterating

Pricing is an iterative skill, not a one-shot decision. The strongest students:

1. Read Position, Forecast, Market Intel (Chapter 4)
2. Make a first pass at prices
3. Sleep on it — literally, come back the next day
4. Adjust based on second look
5. Submit

You'll get faster at it with each period.

Next

→ Chapter 6: Reading Your Results