The room rate calendar

Your rate against the hotels you follow, night by night.

For hotels and short-term rentals, Plan Ahead has a Room rate calendar. Pick a month and each night shows your rate, the middle rate of the hotels you follow, and how far apart you are. Tap a night to see every hotel's rate for it. A dot marks something on in town.

For a hotel, we compare like with like: the cheapest room available for two adults, at your hotel and at theirs. For a rental, we compare you with the middle rate of similar rentals in your town, matched on bedrooms, because rentals come and go and are not worth following one by one. Tell us your bedrooms and a usual rate under the calendar. If you list your room types (a name, what kind of room it is, and its usual price), a dropdown above the calendar lets you compare one with the same kind of room at the hotels you follow. Room types are checked for Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays over the next three weeks, because each hotel and night is a separate lookup. If we have not read your own rate for a night, we use your usual rate, which you can set underneath the calendar. A market figure needs at least 3 followed hotels with a rate for that night.

Rates are checked for every night of the next four weeks, then one Saturday a week further out, on Mondays and Thursdays. A blank night has not been checked yet.

Under the calendar, for hotels, Pricing guidance turns what the rates show into a few plain actions. You can ask for fresh guidance once a week. Accepting one starts the Did it work? follow-up, so you find out afterwards whether it helped. It is guidance, not autopilot: nothing changes your prices.