Short-term rental revenue management: 7 lessons from ISTRM President Zak Ali

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV39jvd2Vxw

Most short-term rental hosts think revenue management is just pricing. Set up a tool, switch it on, and the job's done. According to Zak Ali – President of the International Society for Short Term Rental Management (ISTRM) and a 20-year revenue management veteran across hotels, airlines, and STR – that assumption is exactly what quietly drains profit from a portfolio.

On the latest episode of STR Pricing Pulse – the series powered by Beyond – Zak unpacked how serious operators should actually think about pricing, pace, and demand. Here are the seven ideas worth keeping a notepad open for. Catch the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple.

1. Getting hours back isn't the win – what you do with them is

A recent Beyond report found hosts lose 7-12 hours a week doing work their revenue management system should handle for them. Zak has seen that number play out across portfolios, but he's blunt about it: the lost hours aren't really the problem.

"The problem is what actually happens to those hours once you get them back," he said. Too many managers automate their pricing, recover a morning, then immediately refill it with more admin – or worse, more manual overrides that fight against the system. Automation without redeployment is just a faster way to be busy.

The better move is to spend reclaimed time on the inputs that make the system credible in the first place: base rates, minimum stays, and your competitor set.

2. The one task a system does better than you: repricing at scale

Ask Zak for the single job a revenue management system (RMS) beats a human at, and the answer is immediate: continuous repricing at scale.

Most revenue managers believe their craft is feeling the market – sensing when demand turns. But no human can reprice 50 listings every time fresh pick-up data moves. A disciplined manager reviews weekly; an algorithm reacts the moment the data changes, across the entire booking curve, overnight.

"Where humans win is the layer above," Zak explained. "The strategy the system is going to execute – that's yours. The repricing itself, you hand over."

3. Don't fear the algorithm – fear a lazy set-up

Handing pricing to an algorithm scares a lot of hosts. They picture the system giving the property away cheap. Zak says the fear is aimed at the wrong thing.

"What goes wrong is more boring and more common: the system is fed bad inputs." The wrong base rate. A minimum stay that doesn't match the season you're trading in. A comp set full of properties you don't actually compete with. An RMS scales your judgment – so if your judgment is poor, it scales the mistake faster than you ever could by hand.

The operators who get burnt are the ones who switch it on, never configure it, and then blame the technology. Get the inputs right and monitor your set-up continually, and the system executes a clear strategy far faster than any manual approach.

4. Strategy starts with your business, not the textbook

If you don't know where to begin with strategy, Zak's advice for newcomers is counterintuitive: don't start by learning revenue management.

"Learn your business first," he said. "Learn your market behaviours, what actually drives demand, what your booking patterns look like." Revenue management is a discipline you pick up as you go. The strategy only makes sense once you understand your property, your seasons, and what you're actually trying to achieve – and once you can segment that strategy into smaller chunks to drive the system, and your commercial focus, more precisely.

5. Pricing events late costs you twice

How much do you lose by pricing local events 30 days out instead of 90? Zak refuses to quote a single figure – it depends entirely on the event and market – but the mechanism is what matters.

The loss is front-loaded. Your highest-intent, highest-willingness-to-pay guests often book 60 to 90 days out. If you haven't priced up by then, you sell your best dates at base rate to exactly the people who would have paid you the most. Then you sell out and miss the rate you'd have achieved closer in.

"You lose twice," Zak said. "First the rate delta on your earliest, best bookings – and then the inventory you've already given away too cheap." Pricing an event late doesn't cost you a bit of rate. It costs you your best rooms at your worst price.

6. Stop obsessing over occupancy – RevPAR is the honest number

Here's the one that ruffles feathers. Occupancy, Zak argues, is the one KPI you can guarantee by being bad at your job.

"Drop your rates to zero and you'll be 100% occupied – no problem." Occupancy on its own tells you nothing about whether you made money; it just tells you the property wasn't empty. He's watched managers celebrate a full calendar that was, financially, a disaster, because every night went out too cheap.

The number that matters is RevPAN – revenue per available night – because it holds rate and occupancy together in one figure. Occupancy and rate can each be flattered in isolation; RevPAN can't. Every performance conversation with your team and owners should lead with RevPAN against target, not occupancy against last year. The moment you anchor on occupancy, you've trained everyone to chase the wrong thing.

A useful gut check from the episode: when a serious operator sees occupancy above 90%, the automatic reaction is you're too cheap – and usually, they're right.

7. Build your comp set on fundamentals, not aspiration

Two comp-set mistakes cost operators dearly. The first is watching what competitors charge and matching them – that's outsourcing your strategy to your rivals, including their mistakes. If three of them panic and cut rates in a slow week, the whole market spirals into a race to the bottom. "Your comp set should tell you where you sit, but it should never tell you what to charge."

The second is building it out of aspiration – picking the properties you wish you competed with, rather than genuine substitutes. Base your comp set on fundamentals a guest actually weighs: bedroom count, amenities, and location. As close to your property as possible.

Bonus: the one thing to fix this week to benefit your short-term rental revenue management

If a host could fix only one thing to make more money this week, Zak doesn't say "automate pricing" or "raise rates" – those are the obvious answers. Instead: audit your minimum stay rules.

"Minimum stay rules quietly kill more revenue than your nightly rate ever will, and almost nobody checks them." A restriction you set last season for a good reason is probably still sitting on your calendar, invisibly blocking bookings you'd happily take today. Audit them, and ask whether each one still earns its place.

Your weekly pace review, in three steps

Zak runs the same sequence every week:

1. RevPAN against target for each property – so you know where you stand.

2. Pace against the same point last year – so you know where you sit on the booking curve, ahead or behind for that lead time.

3. Split the portfolio into pacing-ahead and pacing-behind – because they need opposite treatments.

Pacing ahead can mean you're leaving rate on the table. Pacing behind is where discipline matters: don't just drop price. Diagnose first – is it rate, a restriction, or genuinely soft demand? In one recent case, a manager's pace had slowed sharply while rate was actually stronger year on year; the real culprit was misaligned length-of-stay restrictions, not price.

A closing note on AI: Zak insists it won't replace revenue managers – but it will expose bad practice. Its real value is speed, letting you test scenarios against your data that you couldn't run before.

See it live in Leeds – 25 September

Want to go deeper? The ISTRM Revenue Management Intelligence event lands in Leeds on 25 September, at the NatWest Accelerator building – about a two-minute walk from the train station. Organised by the ISTRM together with Host Planet and sponsored by Beyond, it brings together revenue managers, property managers, and operators, with speakers drawn from enterprise property management and other revenue-management-led industries. Expect a live AI agent build for revenue management from Boostly's Mark Simpson, too.

Tickets are £100 – but use code LEEDS for 50% off. If you're serious about your pricing, it's a day worth blocking out. Click here to grab your ticket.

Get your hours – and your rate – back

The themes Zak keeps returning to all point the same way: a system is only as good as the strategy and inputs you give it. That's where Beyond comes in – a revenue management platform built specifically for short-term rentals, with dynamic pricing that responds to real demand, market data so you can see exactly where you sit against your comp set, and insights that turn I think into I know. It's also the team behind the report that found hosts losing 7–12 hours a week to manual pricing.

Instead of second-guessing your rates every morning, get pricing that moves with the market automatically – and spend your reclaimed hours on the strategy that actually grows the business. Click here to find out more about Beyond.

FAQ

What is the most important KPI in short-term rental revenue management? RevPAN (revenue per available night). Unlike occupancy, which you can hit 100% on simply by pricing too low, RevPAR holds rate and occupancy together and reflects whether you actually made money.

Should I trust a revenue management system to price my STR? Yes – for repricing at scale, an RMS outperforms any human. The risk isn't the algorithm; it's feeding it bad inputs like wrong base rates, misaligned minimum stays, or a poor comp set. Get the set-up right and monitor it continually.

How far in advance should I price for local events? Price early. High-intent guests often book 60–90 days out, so pricing events only 30 days ahead means selling your best dates at base rate and losing both the rate uplift and the inventory.

What's the quickest revenue win for an STR host this week? Audit your minimum stay rules. Outdated restrictions sit on the calendar and silently block bookings you'd otherwise accept.

Who is Zak Ali? Zak Ali is President of the International Society for Short Term Rental Management (ISTRM) and a revenue management specialist with 20+ years' experience across hotels, airlines, and short-term rentals.

This article is based on an episode of STR Pricing Pulse, the revenue management series powered by Host Planet. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter, read by thousands of STR professionals across the globe.