Pricing mistakes rarely announce themselves. They show up quietly: a half-empty departure, a review grumbling that the tour wasn’t worth the price, an ad campaign that doesn’t convert.
And as more operators experiment with smarter pricing, there are more ways to get it wrong. Roughly three in 10 operators now use variable or dynamic pricing, up from fewer than one in 10 in 2019. With wider adoption, it’s only natural that there will be more mistakes made along the way.
So how do you ensure you’re getting it right? The Arival Guide to Modern Pricing in Experiences, written by Arival in partnership with travel marketing and consulting agency BlackDog, draws on Arival’s survey of more than 5,000 operators worldwide and research with 2,550 U.S. and European travelers, to offer a step-by-step framework for building a pricing strategy. It also flags four common mistakes operators make. Here’s what they are, and what to do instead.
The guide is available at no cost to Arival Insider Free and Pro members, thanks to report sponsors TourIQ, Aloja, and Walkway.
1. Protecting Your Brand Over Filling Seats
The mistake: Leaving seats empty at full price because a lower price feels like it might cheapen the brand.
It’s an understandable instinct, but it doesn’t match how travelers think. Four out of five say they would accept or adapt to dynamic pricing, and more than half would either choose the cheapest day or time, or book their preferred departure as long as the price difference was modest. To most guests, a lower off-peak price reads as a smart deal, not a discount brand.
Do this instead: Set an off-peak price for your slowest departures, around 15% to 20% below your base rate, as long as it still covers the cost of each guest. Make cheaper dates easy to spot on your booking calendar and tell guests why prices vary. Price-sensitive guests will shift on their own, freeing up your busiest departures for guests willing to pay more.
2. Pushing Peak Prices Too Far
The mistake: Raising prices on your busiest days past what the local market will accept.
Strong demand makes it tempting to keep nudging prices up. But push too far and bookings drop as guests choose a competitor instead. The guests who do pay may feel they overpaid, and they’ll say so online. A higher price also raises expectations, so if the experience doesn’t feel worth it, the damage shows up in your reviews.
Do this instead: Keep peak prices to roughly 10% to 20% above your standard rate, and set a firm ceiling before you raise anything. A good rule of thumb: your highest price should stop before guests start complaining or leaving bad reviews, and no rule or promotion should ever push past it.
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3. Setting It and Forgetting It
The mistake: Building a pricing calendar once and never checking how it performed.
A new pricing calendar can feel like a finished project. But pricing without measuring is really the same approach as static pricing, just with more prices.
Do this instead: Treat pricing as an ongoing experiment. Use your booking system’s reports to track how each departure fills and what it earns, and change one thing at a time. Start with manual peak and off-peak prices for a couple of months, then add a single automated rule, such as raising the price once a departure is 75% sold, and measure the impact before going further.
4. Keeping Marketing and Pricing Apart
The mistake: Letting one team set prices while another runs the marketing, without the two talking.
It’s a common pitfall: the marketing team spends money driving traffic to a tour, while the pricing team has priced that same tour out of reach on slow days. The ad budget gets spent, conversion rates slide and nobody can quite see why.
Do this instead: Treat pricing as a marketing function. Share your pricing calendar with whoever runs your campaigns, and point paid traffic toward departures where off-peak rates can do the converting. Sending ad clicks to a quiet Tuesday at full peak rates converts poorly, while off-peak pricing turns those same clicks into bookings, lowering acquisition costs and stretching ad dollars further.
Smarter Pricing Is a Habit, Not a Setting
These mistakes all have one thing in common: they come from treating pricing as a one-time decision instead of an ongoing part of running the business. Set a floor and a ceiling to adjust your prices within, check in on results regularly, and keep your marketing team in the loop, and your pricing becomes a lot… smarter.
About the Author
Dig Deeper with The Arival Guide to Modern Pricing in Experiences
The full guide includes a step-by-step pricing framework any operator can follow, guidance on choosing between static, variable and dynamic pricing, real-world examples, traveler research on attitudes toward changing prices, questions to ask when evaluating pricing technology and an overview of selected pricing and revenue management providers.
Download The Arival Guide to Modern Pricing in Experiences at no cost with your Arival Insider Free or Pro membership.
Become an Insider Pro Access member today and get access to the full library of Arival research, plus many other benefits such as free consulting sessions, special discounts and 20% off in-person events, starting from $179 per year.
Header image: Pexels / Merve Şahin
