Pietra Di Mare

Tell us about your property

Pietra di Mare is a small guesthouse located in Biassa, halfway between La Spezia and the Cinque Terre. We opened in 2017, and until recently, this village was unknown to the world. Today, 30% of our guests come from Italy, but we’ve worked hard to promote not only our property but the destination as well.

Currently, most of our bookings come through OTAs because we’ve only recently implemented a booking engine. I’m putting a lot of focus on it and plan to develop a dedicated strategy for direct bookings. For now, I’ve started with a small Google Ads campaign.

I needed a solution to help me with what I couldn’t handle myself. Every poorly managed season means lost earning opportunities. And you can’t recover the past—you can only work on the present and the future. So, no, I had no doubts about adopting Smartpricing.

How did you handle pricing before Smartpricing?

I managed pricing manually, trying to avoid leaving them fixed. However, I struggled to adjust them frequently enough or in a truly professional way.

I limited myself to making small adjustments based on competitors, local events, and my demand pressure forecast, but I had very limited tools for this kind of analysis.

Why did you decide to try Smartpricing?

I wanted to save time and optimize room sales based on all the factors that would have required me to spend enormous effort learning and monitoring.

To do this job well, there are countless things to learn, and I’ve never had the time to take courses or improve my skills.

My property is part of the Welcome La Spezia guesthouse consortium, and that’s where I first heard about Smartpricing. I asked colleagues who used it for feedback, and their experiences were positive. But I believe you can’t truly understand something until you try it yourself. So, I gave it a shot.

Did you have doubts about adopting Smartpricing?

I had already decided I needed a solution to help me with what I couldn’t handle myself.

Every poorly managed season means lost earning opportunities. And you can’t recover the past—you can only work on the present and the future. So, no, I had no doubts.

I was so convinced that I decided to start using Smartpricing even during a period when I knew I’d be closed for four months due to renovation work.

How has your work changed with Smartpricing?

I’ve added value because my pricing strategy now considers a multitude of variables, determining the most profitable rate for every period of the year. This has allowed me to increase my average rate by approximately +25%.

I’ve also experienced significant time savings. I make small checks and tweaks occasionally, but the effort required now is incomparable to what I invested in the past.

That’s why I wouldn’t go back to the old method, and I firmly believe Smartpricing is an excellent tool for increasing a business’s profitability, even for a micro-business.