Saturday is pacing 9 rooms ahead. It's still $189.

Why it matters

At a small hotel, rates get set once and left alone. Somebody builds a season, loads it, and moves on to the next fire. Then a Saturday starts filling faster than normal and nobody notices, because nobody is looking at pace for a date six weeks out. The night sells out at a quiet-weekend price. The loss never shows up on a report, because a sold-out night looks like a win. Pricing by pace means every night is graded against how your own hotel normally fills for that date, every night, before your team starts.

How it works

1. It reads your booking curve. For every night ahead, it compares rooms on the books today with what is normal for that date at your hotel. That gap is pace.
2. It adds what moves demand. Your comp set's rates and the local events on that date.
3. It decides. A night filling faster than normal and still priced like a quiet one gets a higher rate. A night with a minimum stay blocking empty rooms gets flagged.
4. It acts inside your limits. You set the floor and ceiling. With automatic rates on, it writes the rate and minimum stay to Cloudbeds inside them, with a cap on every change.
5. It checks its own work. It reads the rate back from Cloudbeds, logs the before and after, and gives you one tap to undo.
6. It reports what it made. Monday's report shows the change and its estimated effect, kept apart from actuals.

A worked example

Sample property: The Wildflower Inn

• The night: Saturday, October 10.
• What it saw: pacing 9 rooms ahead of normal for 60 days out. Harvest Fest in town. Comp set $22 higher.
• What it was priced at: $189, the same as a quiet weekend.
• What it did at 6:10 AM: moved Saturday to $227 with a 2-night minimum, inside the owner's floor and ceiling.
• How it checked: wrote it to Cloudbeds, read it back ($227 is live), logged change #1042 with before, after and why.
• What it said it would do next: if pace slows by Wednesday, bring it back down.
• Estimated effect: +$410 for the night, shown on Monday as an estimate, not an actual.

The same logic runs the other way. Friday, October 9 had a 2-night minimum blocking 6 empty rooms. That went to the owner as one question: lift it for Friday?

What it doesn't do

• It never prices outside your floor and ceiling. Those are yours. Set them and it works inside them.
• It doesn't write anything until you turn on automatic rates. Until then, it recommends each rate and you decide.
• It doesn't hide its changes. Every write is logged with before, after and why, and read back from Cloudbeds.
• It doesn't promise a number. Estimates are labeled as estimates until the night is sold.