Base Pricing: How To Update Nightly Rates for Campsites

The steps below will guide you in updating the rates for your Campsites.

Whether opening your calendar for the next year, making adjustments to current rates, or adding in a special rate for an event or holiday, this article will help you achieve each. Follow each of these steps to successfully update your rates.

For demonstration purposes, this article will be adding the following to a current rate plan for John Doe Campground:

  1. Add new rates for 2024
  2. Manually add a Holiday Rate for: Memorial Day, Canada Day / July 4th, Labor Day
  3. Manually add a Special Event Rate for April 2024

 

Commonly Used Reports to plan your rates:

Daily Revenue and Occupancy by Site Type

Daily Revenue and Occupancy by Site

1. Download the Base Prices for Campsites report 

Select Reporting from the primary navigation.
Enter “Base Prices for Campsites” in the Search Reports: field.

Click on the Base Price for Campsites report in the All Reports list.

This is different from the reported named: Base Price Template for Campsites

Click the Download button.

Tip: Favorite this report by clicking the star to the left of the report title. 

01 - Finding report

2. Update pricing in the Base Prices for Campsites report 

Open the Base Prices for Campsites .csv file from your browser downloads folder.
Edit pricing by adjusting existing pricing for future dates or by adding on new dates and pricing. 

Save the file to your computer.

Tip: When editing the Base Prices for Campsites spreadsheet, it is recommended that you do not delete any old pricing data but instead add on to what already exists. Learn more about filling out the Base Price Report here

For John Doe Campground, we need to add rates for next year and increase the Base Pricing for Holidays and Special Events:

1. Adding a new Base Price for 2024:

02 - Download CSV

2. Adding a new Base Price for 3 major Holidays (Memorial Day, Canada Day / July 4th and Labor Day)

03 - Holiday Rates

3. Adding a new Base Price for a special event in April

04 - Special Rate

The Base Price Report for John Doe Campground was saved to a folder called "Rate Planning - Campsites" with a file name "2024 Rate Strategy as of 02.2023"

Tip: In the demonstration, when adding in the Holiday Rate or Special Event rate, you may notice that the Days of Week entered into the Base Pricing CSV included all days of the week (M,T,W,Th,F,S,Su). You may ask:

Don't those rates only apply to a specific set of dates, not all days of the week?

Where the rate may not be valid for all days of the week, rather just the specific dates entered into the CSV document. As a best practice, entering all days of the week will prevent a potential Unsuccessful Upload in the next step.

For the Holiday Rates specifically, you may want a higher rate for those Holidays each year. When updating future Base Prices, using all days of the week will save you time from having to define specific days of week year over year.

3. Upload Campsite Pricing CSV

Select Campground Setup from the primary navigation.
Select Properties from the secondary navigation.
Select Base Pricing from the tertiary navigation.
Click the Upload Campsite Pricing CSV button.

Select your Base Prices for Campsites from the location you saved it in your computer and click open. This file will be called Baseline Prices (campsites) in excel. 
Wait for the Upload Successful toast message to appear at the top of the page.

Screen Shot 2022-02-28 at 5.31.26 PM

 

If you do not see the Upload Successful message, your upload was not successful. Troubleshoot by double checking dates, formatting, and the DOW row. If any of these are incorrect, your upload will be unsuccessful.

Below is the upload of the Base Pricing from the demonstration:

05 - Upload Base Pricing CSV

4. How To Check Your Work 

Go to the Reporting section in the primary navigation and download the Base Prices for Campsites report again. This report should match the file that was just uploaded. 


Base Price Report versus Base Price Template Report

There is a report called Base Price Template. This report looks very similar to your Base Price Report, but without as much data. This report should not be used to upload new Base Prices.

Q: When should I use the Base Price Template?

A: On your Base Price Report, you will notice that each Site Type has a unique number assigned. If you were to add a new Site Type to your Admin Site, you can download the Base Price Template to identify the unique number. When you are ready to create new rates for this Site Type, you will download the Base Price Report, inputting that unique number from the Template report.

If you use the Base Price Template Report, you will lose very valuable information from your Admin site. 


Dynamic Pricing

The demonstration above shows how to capture a higher rate during periods of time with higher occupancy (Holidays, Special Events, etc.). A campground has only so many sites to sell on a given night making the inventory finite.

Capturing a higher rate based on a demand, will help you generate more and more revenue. Campspot has a feature that can help you increase rates based on occupancy limits. 

Read this article to learn more about automating rate increases as a reflection of demand for your finite site count.