Birkenhof

Tell us about your property.

I took over Birkenhof from my mother in 2016 and completed a full renovation in 2018, including brand-new kitchens and bathrooms, bringing the property up to a modern four-star standard.

Since then, business has grown significantly, and we've managed to increase revenue well above previous levels.

We offer seven vacation apartments and one room, with capacity for a total of 40 guests.

Our peak season runs from mid-December through Easter, during which we’re almost always fully booked. Summer season keeps improving as well.

Most of our guests come from Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, but we also see visitors from Eastern Europe and even overseas. Today, we have a very high percentage of repeat guests.

About 60% of our guests book directly online, around 30% book via Booking.com, and another 5% through Feratel and other channels.

I’ve noticed that the market has become more volatile. With fixed prices, you can’t react immediately to changes. Smartpricing keeps track of everything in real time.

How did you manage your pricing before Smartpricing?

Before Smartpricing, I set my prices manually in an Excel spreadsheet. It was a classic price list with fixed rates for the different seasonal periods, like Carnival or Christmas. I usually updated the list once a year, in January.

Since when have you been using Smartpricing, and how did you come across it?

I’ve been using Smartpricing since April 2024, and it actually started when I was setting my prices last year.

I use Kognitiv-Seekda as my channel manager, and naturally, I did some price comparisons to see where my property stood. That’s when I noticed some competitors had huge price fluctuations.

So, I asked a fellow hotelier why her prices were so high, and she told me she’d switched to Smartpricing.

That was my first introduction to the software, and later, I decided to give it a try myself.

What convinced you to use Smartpricing?

I realized the market has become much more dynamic. With fixed prices, you can’t react quickly to things like periods of bad weather or special events.

Smartpricing takes all those factors into account, right down to the specific day of the week, and always keeps an eye on market conditions.

What results have you achieved with Smartpricing?

The algorithm sets prices based on its analysis—sometimes at levels I wouldn’t have dared to set myself.

But I’ve learned that we can get stuck in our assumptions about where our prices should be.

And the bookings are still coming in. You could say that the booking behavior is a bit more cautious at higher price points, but overall, I’m generating around 10% more revenue compared to before.

This past winter, most of the regular guests had already booked before we started using Smartpricing, so I’m confident we’ll continue to see positive results moving forward.

Have you saved time using Smartpricing?

Of course, at the beginning, you need to invest some time to get familiar with the system. It took me a few hours to set up the base rates.

But once everything was in place, I hardly have to spend any time on it. I rarely need to make any adjustments.

What do you like most about Smartpricing?

Here’s how I’d sum it up: Would I recommend it to a colleague? Yes—I already have.

Why?

Because Smartpricing really supports me in responding to market-driven factors like weather, events, and weekdays.

I spend less time managing rates, and I can already open prices for 2025, since they’re calculated up to 500 days in advance.