In this article, WeYield presents a collection of potential use cases for our new self-service rate shop planner module. We aim at developing our client autonomy and freedom to pilot better.

Following the release of our new rate shop planner feature, clients now have greater flexibility and autonomy to take control of their competitive rate shopping. As we recently added the ability for queries to be launched immediately via the ‘‘run now’ feature, we decided to review some of the interesting use cases we have seen in our clients' accounts.

Here are some ideas for you to consider:‍

1. Deep dive into daily pricing to investigate the seasonal impact on price changes

Often our clients regularly shop their top pickup days and durations to get an understanding of their competitive position for these key selling scenarios and this makes sense to get the most value out of your Rateshop subscription. However, once in a while it might make sense to do a big shop covering every pickup date for the upcoming 1,3, or even 6 months to identify if you are raising your prices in line with your competitors and if any of them are pricing certain dates differently. Perhaps anticipating different demands? Or a special event running? Investigate if your competition prices the same for midweek as weekends, is this the same for all durations?

2. Investigate new sales channels

Utilize the rate shop planner tool to look at your pricing and rank/position on your other broker and/or OTA partners? Or perhaps check out your competitors' pricing across multiple broker sites? Maybe even rate shop a potential new partner broker to understand how they might rank you and/or manipulate the rate you give them, based on how they price your competition?

If there are any sites missing let us know and we can develop them for a small cost.

3. Shop key future dates not covered by your regular scheduled shopping

Regular schedules typically look at the next 8, 10, or 12 weeks in the future for key pickups and durations. Often these scenarios miss key events and holiday dates that have their own unique demand. Use the planner to shop event dates (often with abnormal durations chosen by customers) like Christmas, Easter, Ramadan, Chinese New Year or public holidays, conferences, or even popular sports events such as the Grand Prix or Champions League Football or Cricket matches.

4. Investigate prices for irregular rental durations

We typically see popular rental durations shopped, eg 1, 2, 3-day durations along with 7 and 14-day durations for leisure destinations. Get ahead of the competition by investigating pricing discrepancies with odd durations, for example when people extend their typical trips over Easter due to multiple public holidays. Perhaps you can cut peaks over extremely high demand dates by manipulating longer duration pricing and improving utilization on either side of your peaks?

5. Spot check next Summer’s pricing levels

This year might be going well, but how is your next Summer doing? Perhaps consider regular collecting data on key Summer dates, eg Saturday pickups for 7-day rentals so you can identify when a competitor makes a significant price move? Use this as an opportunity to get ahead of your competition.

6. Check the prices of your smaller/less popular destinations

Your smaller, less revenue-generating destinations are still important but don’t necessarily need to be rate shopped every week. Consider running Adhoc captures to verify your pricing levels are as expected and when you know you will have time to properly review the data.

7. Comprehensive lates check/look for price change patterns

Consider running a daily capture of your next 1 or 2 weeks of pickups, to understand any last-minute price changes as your competitors drop prices to fill excess stock, or closeout cars as they sell out. Perhaps running this consistently will help you to identify your competitors' pricing patterns, i.e which destinations are priced daily, which are priced weekly, and also the day of the week they make the changes, so you can plan your own price changes accordingly….

8. Investigate different Points of Sales

WeYield has access to many sites (more than 200) and these can be shopped from many points of sales, consider investigating if prices differ much by market, perhaps there are opportunities in emerging markets?

To summarize:

• The new rate shop planner feature gives clients a lot more control and flexibility when it comes to deciding what to rate shop and when to collect the data.
• There are many scenarios to investigate, but a good starting point is your secondary and tertiary destinations, key dates not covered by scheduled shopping, and your smaller broker/sales channels.

This is just a small selection of some of the use cases we have seen since the new functionality was launched in late September. Keep in mind that piloting in autonomy with efficiency is important for WeYield.

Please let us know if you have found other interesting use cases when using the rate shop planner tool, so we can share them with your fellow revenue management colleagues.