Get started as a host
Setting your first price
Price too high and your calendar stays empty. Price too low and you're leaving money on the table every month. Here's how to land on a number that actually books, without guessing or copying whatever the listing next door happens to be charging.
Start by checking what's around you
Look at three to five similar listings in your neighbourhood - same room type, similar finish, similar building quality - and use that range as your starting point, not your ceiling. Don't compare a self-contained studio in a serviced building against a shared room in an older compound; guests don't compare them either, and neither should your pricing. If you can't find close matches nearby, widen the search to a comparable neighbourhood a short drive away and adjust slightly for location. This early research takes twenty minutes and saves months of a listing sitting unbooked at a price nobody in the market is actually willing to pay. Write down the range you find rather than keeping it in your head - it's a useful reference point to come back to later, and it stops price creep in either direction from happening gradually without you noticing.
Price a little under market for your first two weeks
A brand-new listing has zero reviews, which is a real disadvantage regardless of how nice the space is - guests naturally trust a listing with a track record over one with none. Undercutting the market by ten to fifteen percent in your first two weeks gets your first bookings and reviews moving faster, which matters more long-term than the extra naira you'd have earned holding out at full price. Think of the discount as a marketing cost, not a permanent position - it exists specifically to get past the zero-review problem, and it should come off once you've got even three or four solid reviews in place.
Revisit it every month
Once you've built a small review history and a sense of real demand, raise your price gradually rather than in one large jump that might scare off enquiries. Your Insights dashboard shows how your price compares to similar listings nearby, updated regularly, so you're not guessing month to month. Treat pricing as an ongoing setting you adjust, not a one-time decision you make at listing setup and never touch again - the market around you shifts with seasons, new competing listings, and demand from nearby institutions, and a price that was right three months ago may already be leaving money on the table or scaring off bookings today. A five to ten percent increase every month or two, once demand supports it, adds up meaningfully over a year without ever feeling like a shock to returning search traffic.
Understand what guests are really comparing
Guests rarely compare your listing in isolation - they compare the total of your nightly or monthly rate against three or four alternatives they've already shortlisted before they ever message you. If your headline price looks competitive but your caution deposit or service fee pushes the real total noticeably higher than similar listings, guests notice at checkout and abandon the booking. Check your Insights dashboard for the all-in comparison, not just the headline rate, since that's the number guests are actually weighing your listing against when they're deciding between tabs. This is especially easy to miss for a first listing, where it's tempting to focus entirely on the number in the biggest font and forget that guests are doing the same total-cost comparison you'd do yourself when booking anywhere else.
Don't chase the lowest price in your area
There's always a listing willing to go lower, and matching it is rarely the right move - it usually signals a lower-quality space rather than a better deal, and it trains guests who only care about price, who are more likely to cause problems or leave weaker reviews. Compete on the details instead: better photos, faster response time, a clearer description of what's included. A slightly higher price with a listing that clearly looks better cared for consistently outperforms the cheapest option in the same search results, because guests are optimising for confidence, not just cost. Racing to the bottom on price also makes it harder to raise your rate later, since guests who found you specifically because you were the cheapest option tend to be the most price-sensitive and least likely to accept a future increase without pushback.
Factor in your real costs, not just rent
Your price needs to cover more than the bare unit cost - electricity for shared areas, generator fuel, cleaning between short-let guests, and platform fees all come out of what you charge before it's genuinely profit. A price that looks attractive on paper but doesn't account for these recurring costs isn't actually competitive; it's just underpriced. Build a simple monthly cost estimate once, and use it as your real floor price - the number below which hosting the unit stops being worth your time, separate from whatever the market happens to be charging around you. Revisit this floor periodically too, since fuel and utility costs shift over time, and a floor price calculated a year ago may no longer reflect what it actually costs you to keep the listing running today.
Set it, then move on to the rest of your listing
Pricing is one lever, not the only one - once it's set at a sensible starting point, put equal effort into your title and description and your photos, since all three work together to convert a search result into a booking. A well-priced listing with weak photos still underperforms, and a beautifully photographed listing priced far outside the local range will too. Come back to price monthly, but don't let it consume all your attention in the first week when the description and photos still need the same care. A good enough price set today, paired with a strong listing, consistently beats a perfect price you're still agonising over a week later while the listing sits unpublished.
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