--- title: "3 Proven Strategies to Dominate Airbnb’s Low Season" canonical_url: "https://freewyldfoundry.com/podcast/ep671-slow-season/" content_type: "podcast-episode" last_updated: "2025-11-03T00:00:00.000Z" --- Episode 671 of the Get Paid For Your Pad podcast. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojXHv1S_Kxk Audio: https://embed.acast.com/5afc793a028014b853c89db4/6907f8f9e4f1777b41ee2666?accentColor=161616&bgColor=e48f0c&secondaryColor=161616 Want to outperform the market? If you’re managing 15+ listings and want a free pricing audit, **[apply here](https://freewyldfoundry.com/get-started/).** In this episode of *Get Paid for Your Pad*, Jasper Ribbers breaks down the three key pillars of a strong Low Season Strategy and how they drive visibility, occupancy, and cash flow across 43 portfolios at Freewyld Foundry. You’ll learn exactly how to: * Get ahead of the curve with pacing and market penetration (MPI) * Use custom seasonal pricing instead of cutting your base rates * Leverage length-of-stay discounts to attract 1-3 month bookings * Keep your OTA momentum alive to protect spring and summer performance * Balance occupancy versus revenue while keeping your team engaged We also talk about: * Why most operators adjust too late and how that kills visibility * How to set realistic occupancy targets for your specific market * Why a "slow" season can double your long-term bookings * The hidden link between low-season pacing and summer ADRs 🎯 **Mentioned in the Episode:**\ - [5 Revenue Management Strategies to Crush Your Short-Term Rental Revenue in 2026](/blog/5-revenue-management-strategies-to-crush-your-short-term-ren) - [Aligning Owners as Revenue Strategies Evolve in a Dynamic Market](/blog/aligning-owners-as-revenue-strategies-evolve-in-a-dynamic-ma) - [The STR Pacing Playbook](/guides/str-pacing-playbook) Freewyld Foundry: Free Revenue Report → freewyldfoundry.com/report\ Freewyld Foundry: Revenue & Pricing Management → [freewyldfoundry.com](https://freewyldfoundry.com)\ VRMA Conference Insights 2024 🔥 **Favorite Takeaway:**\ "Low season doesn’t mean low revenue. It’s your best chance to prove how good you really are at revenue management." ## Transcript **Jasper Ribbers | Freewyld:** Welcome back to _Get Paid for Your Pad_. This is another episode of _RevUp_, where we share the revenue management strategies we use across more than 40 short-term rental portfolios at Freewyld Foundry. Today’s topic is low season strategy: how to maintain occupancy, protect visibility, and set your listings up for success when demand slows down. Most operators are entering their low season now. Unless you’re in a ski or Texas market, you’re probably seeing occupancy drop. That can be challenging, but if you manage pacing, pricing, and visibility properly, your low season can actually strengthen your high-season performance. The biggest mistake most operators make is waiting too long to adjust. By the time bookings drop off after Halloween or Veterans Day, they start reacting instead of preparing. The key is to plan early. At Freewyld Foundry, we track our Market Penetration Index, or MPI, which measures your future occupancy compared to the market. If your occupancy for the next four months is 20% and the market’s at 10%, your MPI is 200%. That’s where you want to be: ahead of the curve. For most markets, final low season occupancy ranges between 20 and 50%. We aim to maintain at least 50 to 60%. Consistent occupancy keeps your visibility strong on OTAs. If your listing goes months without bookings, your ranking drops, your visibility declines, and your summer performance suffers as a result. The first step is managing pacing early. Don’t wait until your calendar is empty. Use data from pricing tools to create custom seasonal profiles that adjust your rates for the low season without touching your base price. Lowering your base price impacts your rates year-round, including summer, so it’s better to set temporary seasonal adjustments. If your market occupancy drops below 30%, go aggressive. Set your rates close to your minimums. Focus on maintaining momentum, not maximizing nightly rates. The more bookings you get, the more visibility and reviews you earn, which helps sustain traffic to your listings. The second step is attracting longer stays. Low season is ideal for targeting guests who stay one to three months. Offer monthly discounts and length-of-stay incentives through Airbnb rule sets. Avoid restricting bookings with 30-night minimums; instead, keep your calendar flexible to stay visible and fill in gaps. We’ve seen the best results with a two-night minimum during the low season. It might seem counterintuitive, but that flexibility helps your listing appear more often in search results, which also attracts longer stays. Use rule sets to offer discounts for three, five, seven, and fourteen nights, not just monthly bookings. This lets you capture more demand and show visible discounts in Airbnb’s pricing breakdown, which helps conversion. To recap: track your pacing and MPI early, adjust your seasonal pricing before the market slows down, offer length-of-stay discounts to attract longer bookings, stay flexible with minimum nights, and focus on occupancy and momentum over short-term revenue. The goal in low season is to keep your listings moving. More bookings mean your cleaning and maintenance teams stay active, your cash flow improves, and your listings maintain their visibility going into spring and summer. We’ve seen clients double or even triple low season revenue by making these adjustments early. Even small gains make a difference during the slower months, especially for cash flow and maintaining strong visibility for the year ahead. If you want a personalized revenue report, visit **freewyldfoundry.com/report**. Our team will review your pricing, pacing, and performance, and show you how to improve your low season strategy. Thanks for tuning in to _Get Paid for Your Pad_. See you next week. --- ## About this file This is the agent-readable version of a page on freewyldfoundry.com. The canonical page for people is https://freewyldfoundry.com/podcast/ep671-slow-season/ Freewyld Foundry runs revenue management for short-term rental operators: pricing strategy, distribution, and the systems around them. We manage 3,500+ listings representing $170M+ in annual bookings for 70+ clients. Pricing is custom and scales with portfolio size. Related machine-readable resources: - Every page in this format: https://freewyldfoundry.com/agent/pages/index.json - Site overview: https://freewyldfoundry.com/llms.txt - Request a free revenue report: https://freewyldfoundry.com/get-started/