For winter-sports hotels in Tyrol, Vorarlberg’s Bregenzerwald, and Graubünden’s Engadin and Davos region, right now is the real off-season.
Summer hikers have had their season, ski season hasn’t started, and the calendar finally has room to breathe. Most properties use this stretch for maintenance and a well-earned rest. The one thing that usually gets pushed aside is next winter’s pricing, even though this is exactly when there’s time to do it properly.
Winter starts sooner than it feels.
- Tyrol’s glacier areas open as early as October, with main resorts like Kitzbühel following from early November.
- Vorarlberg’s high-altitude resorts like Warth-Schröcken typically open in early December, once there’s enough snow.
- Graubünden’s Diavolezza opens early too, in mid-October, while Corvatsch follows only in late November with Christmas, New Year, and the internationally watched January weeks around Davos following almost immediately after.
Wait until the season starts to think about pricing, and there’s no room left to think it through.
The pattern that costs you without you noticing
If you’ve been setting one price for the season and adjusting when you can, that’s completely normal, most independent winter hotels do exactly that. The market’s just moved a bit further each year: new competitors, different booking patterns, demand from neighboring regions shifting. A few small adjustments now go a long way.”
Four things worth doing this month
1. Price each stretch of the season separately.
Don’t set one winter rate. Set four: the early opening weeks, Christmas and New Year, the January peak around Davos, and everything else. These weeks don’t behave the same, so they shouldn’t be priced the same.
2. Lock in your minimum stay for Christmas, New Year, and the Davos weeks now.
A two- or three-night minimum on these dates prevents a peak Saturday from turning into a one-night guest at full rate, while the rest of the week sits half-booked. Decide this while you have time to think it through, not the week bookings start.
3. Check your pickup against where you’d expect to be
Look at repeat guests, group blocks, or early enquiries for Christmas and January, and compare that to your own typical pace at this point in the season. Ahead of where you’d expect to be means keep pushing your rate. Behind it means you have time to adjust before the season locks in, which you won’t have in November.
4. Put two check-ins on your calendar.
One in early October, one in early November. Ten minutes each time to compare actual bookings against your plan for each stretch, and adjust the rate if the picture’s changed. A plan you never revisit against real pickup is a guess with a deadline attached.
For smaller, family-run properties, often one person handling reception, pricing, and guest care at once, there’s rarely a stretch of the year with actual room to do this. Right now is that stretch.
You don’t need an entire revenue team to get this right
This is also where RoomPricGenie earns its place. It was built for hotels exactly this size: small, independent, no revenue team behind them. Every night, it looks at demand and competitor pricing and adjusts your rates automatically, factoring in each region’s early season start and its peak weeks. Whether the first Advent weekend in Warth-Schröcken is worth ten euros more than expected isn’t something you have to work out by hand. It runs quietly in the background, and your winter strategy holds all the way through January instead of going stale after the first snowfall.
In the same study of 567 hotels across nine countries, revenue rose 19% year over year on average. Over 4,000 hotels in 65 countries run on RoomPriceGenie today, many of them family-run properties not so different in size from those across Tyrol, Vorarlberg, and Graubünden.
You don’t need a revenue team to price like one. Use this quiet stretch now, and you’ll walk into the season with four decisions already made, not a guess made the day the first snow falls.
To learn how RoomPriceGenie can help your property increase your property’s profitability, start your free trial of our automated pricing solution today!
