How a Motel in Canada Achieved 30% RevPAR Growth With PriceLabs

Executive Summary

Matt Blake runs a seven-room waterfront motel on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, from Mexico. Pricing is hard in a seasonal town of 5,000 people, with almost no hotel competition and costly one-night winter stays.

He prices all seven rooms with PriceLabs through Cloudbeds. It picks up local events before he does, lets him set price floors and seasonal rules, and manages length of stay through a summer peak of nearly 97% occupancy from June through September.

About the Motel

Riverside by Cowichan Lake Cottages is a seven-room waterfront property in a seasonal town of about 5,000 people on Vancouver Island. Matt has run it for three years, after five years as a short-term rental operator. It runs at nearly 97% occupancy from June through September.

Each of the seven rooms is different, so each is priced on its own. Guests share a fire pit, a barbecue, a games room with a retro Nintendo console, and a river dock for swimming in summer and fishing in winter. Three part-time staff handle cleaning, and Matt visits twice a year. OTAs bring European travelers in the shoulder seasons.

“In the summer we’re a short-term rental, essentially, but in the winter we’re a motel.” – Matt Blake

Challenges Before PriceLabs

Matt’s pricing problem comes from where the motel sits and how it operates. The core challenges were:

• Little local hotel data: The area has very few hotel or motel rooms. Most nearby supply is short-term rentals run by operators who do not use sophisticated pricing, so much of the data behind Matt’s market comes from properties that sell differently from a motel.
• One-night stays in winter: Nearby short-term rentals avoid them, but a motel has to take them. Matt pays staff and has no on-site laundry. He keeps cleaning fees at $30 to $40 so a three-day guest barely notices, but on a one-night stay the same fee and labor weigh heavily.
• Two businesses in one year: In summer the motel behaves like a short-term rental. In winter it behaves like a motel. Pricing and minimum-stay rules have to work for both.
• Moving software: Matt changed his PMS three times in three years and now runs on Cloudbeds. Each move took real work, and the changes broke the reporting history he would need to show year-over-year results.

“Last winter we were getting killed on one-night stays, because we would have to price them so aggressively low, plus our cleaning fees.” – Matt Blake

PriceLabs as a Solution

Matt signed up for a PriceLabs trial in 2021, while running a short-term rental in a tourist town. He has stayed with PriceLabs through the move from rentals to the motel and through three PMS changes.

Key features that made a difference:

• Local event pricing: PriceLabs reads local demand, including events and holidays, and raises prices around them through Demand Factor Sensitivity.

“I don’t have to be on a community page to find out when they announce the dates of a festival.” – Matt Blake

• A price floor he controls: Matt sets a minimum price, so rates can follow demand without falling below a number that works for the motel.
• Seasonal settings and minimum stays: Matt runs a business with two modes, and seasonal settings let him treat them differently. In peak season, demand does most of the work and PriceLabs manages length of stay. In the off-season, he holds firm on weekend minimum stays for dates seven to 30 days out, and when a room is still empty within seven days, he takes any stay available.

• PriceLabs data inside Claude: Matt has connected PriceLabs to Claude through the PriceLabs MCP and the API, and has set up a small program that nudges prices up and down by small amounts a few times a day. He is still experimenting with it.

Results

Matt is pulling year-over-year numbers from Portfolio Analytics. Here is what he reports today:

• Higher revenue: Matt reported a +34.72% summer revenue increase and a +30.62% RevPAR growth year over year.
• Nearly full summers: The motel runs at nearly 97% occupancy from June through September, with PriceLabs managing length of stay through the peak. Matt reads that number as a sign that rates may still have room to rise, and he plans to check it in the dashboard.
• Events detected without the legwork: From his first trial, PriceLabs priced a festival weekend well above where Matt would have set it, and the booking came in.

“PriceLabs found upcoming events before I had time to research them, and set a rate I wouldn’t have come up with on my own.” – Matt Blake

Looking Ahead

Matt aspires to manage other properties in the area, and PriceLabs remains the tool he uses to price the motel through every season. Looking ahead, he hopes pricing keeps moving toward the way he runs the business: describe the goal, then review the result.

“I would just like to be able to say, ‘This is what I’m trying to accomplish. Just do it.’ And then come back to me and say, ‘This is how it looks.’” – Matt Blake