Hotel rate shopper for independent hotels (UK)

What is a rate shopper for, in a small hotel?

Most owner-managers already shop rates by hand. You open a booking site in the evening, type in a Saturday three weeks out, and look at what the hotel down the road is asking. It works, but it takes half an hour, it only covers the nights you remember to check, and it tells you nothing about the nights you did not.

A rate shopper does that checking for every night ahead and for every hotel you name, and puts it in one place. The point is not the list of prices. The point is the decision it lets you make: whether to hold your rate, raise it or bring it down, and how early. If you want the method behind that decision, our guide on how to price hotel rooms walks through it, and the glossary has a short definition of a rate shopper.

What will you see?

• Your competitors’ prices and availability, side by side. Every hotel you follow, for the nights ahead, with the ones that have sold out marked as sold out rather than left blank.
• Where your price sits. For each night, whether you are below, level with or above the hotels you compete with, and by how much in pounds.
• The events that move your town (Pro and above). Concerts, football, festivals, conferences and bank holidays near you, on the nights they fall, so a busy weekend does not arrive as a surprise.
• A plain-English read of what tonight is worth. A recommended rate for each night with the reason in a sentence: the market is filling, an event is on, or you are already well placed.
• Alerts when a competitor moves. When a hotel you follow drops or raises its price on a night that matters, or sells out, you hear about it rather than finding out later.
• Your reviews in one place, with help drafting replies.

Everything opens on your phone as well as a laptop. Many of the hoteliers we built it for price their rooms in the evening, after service, with a phone in one hand.

What does that look like for a 24-room hotel?

Take a 24-room hotel on the Welsh coast, at around £110 a night midweek in autumn and £165 on a summer Saturday. It is a Tuesday in late September. A Saturday three weeks out shows your five nearest rivals between £125 and £150, and two of them already sold out. You are still at £110.

That night is worth more than you are asking. The rate shopper shows it at a glance: you sit at the bottom of a market that is filling, a few days earlier than you would have noticed by hand. Moving to £135 on 10 of your remaining rooms is £250 for one decision. The midweek nights either side, where everyone is still at £100 to £115, stay where they are.

Who is it for?

Owner-managers of independent hotels, inns and guest houses with roughly 10 to 60 rooms, in the UK and Ireland, who set their own prices and do not employ a revenue manager. It also suits small groups of two to ten properties, where one person looks after the pricing for all of them.

If you want more than a rate shopper, the same account covers demand signals, rate parity across your channels, operations and an AI assistant that answers from your own numbers. That wider picture is described on our revenue management software page.

How long does setup take?

Minutes. You type your hotel’s name, confirm it is the right one and how many rooms you have, and the first read of your market begins. RatePulse suggests the hotels you most likely compete with; you keep them, swap them or add your own. There is nothing to install and no PMS needed to start.

What does it cost?

A new hotel starts with a 14-day trial of Pro+, with no card asked for. After that there are four plans, paid monthly, or yearly with one month free:

Basic is the rate shopper on its own. Pro adds trends, events, a connection to a supported PMS and unlimited review replies. Pro+ adds rate parity across your channels and the full set of day-to-day operations tools. Enterprise is for groups, with each property billed on its own. If you are weighing RatePulse against other tools, our comparison of rate shopping tools for small UK hotels sets them out side by side, with their published prices.

What it is not

• Not a channel manager. It does not send your rates or availability to Booking.com, Expedia or anywhere else. Keep the channel manager you have.
• Not a PMS. It does not take reservations, check guests in or run your front desk. It can read from a supported PMS on Pro and above.
• Not a booking engine. Guests do not book through it. It can tell you when your own website is cheaper or dearer than the channels you sell on, which is what rate parity is about.