Your rate doesn't matter

Your ADR has feelings. The market doesn’t.

Revenue management expert argues hotels should price based on market willingness to pay rather than internal costs or ego, using probability-weighted demand analysis.

You want to change your commercial outcome? You need to change the way you think!

Here’s one of the hardest truths in revenue management. It’s not about what you want to charge. Its about what they’re willing to pay. This translates to: Your rate doesn’t matter. Your positioning doesn’t matter. Your cost structure doesn’t matter. How hard your team worked doesn’t matter.

What matters is whether someone pulls out their credit card.

You can sit in a meeting and say “We deserve 350. We’re premium. Our product is better.”

That’s cute. The market doesn’t reward what you deserve. It rewards what it values.

And value is not declared. It’s perceived.

The uncomfortable part

Sometimes you want to charge more. I get it: Owner pressure. Budget targets. ADR ambitions. GM ego. You having a stick up your backside.                                                                           

But the real question isn’t: “what do we want to charge?” It’s: “What are they willing to pay…right now…in this context…with these…alternatives?”

Because that’s where it gets brutal: It’s not just willingness to pay. It’s willingness x probability.

If €350 sells at 20% and €320 sells at 60%, which one actually wins? Exactly. Revenue management is not ego pricing. It’s probability – weighted value perception.

Now let’s talk content (as you are reading this): Same disease - Different room.

You sit down and think: “I want to write about this. This is clever. This is advanced.”

Truth: Pretty much nobody wakes up hoping someone explains displacement modeling to them over coffee.

Yes content works exactly like pricing. It’s not about what you fancy writing. It’s about what people feel tension around. You can post something intellectually brilliant and get 12 likes.

Or you can touch a frustration, an insecurity, a commercial truth nobody wants to say out loud…and suddenly it moves.

Because value isn’t created by intention - it’s created by relevance.

The mirror moment

Hotels overprice because they fall in love with their effort.

Content creators underperform because they fall in love with their thoughts

Both forget the same thing.

The decision is not happening in your head. It’s happening in theirs. Guests don’t pay for your budget. They pay for how your offer feels compared to alternatives. Readers don’t engage with your expertise. They engage with what reflects, solves, or challenges. The market is not emotional about you. You are emotional about you. That’s the gap.

So what’s the play?

In revenue management:

• Understanding willingness to pay
• Understand substitutes
• Understand timing
• Understand context
• Understand probability

In content:

• Understand pain points
• Understand curiosity
• Understand emotional triggers
• Understand what people think but don’t say

Same principle

Value is not what you declare. It’s what they receive and more importantly: act upon.

Final thought

The market doesn’t reward what you want. It rewards what it values. Detach from ego in pricing. Detach from ego in content. Detach from ego in strategy. Because whether it’s a hotel or a LinkedIn post…it’s never about what you want to charge.

It’s about what they’re willing to pay.

Fabian Bartnick aka. Fabi – The Commercial Growth Leader. I’ve built and exited hospitality tech companies, trained thousands of leaders worldwide in sales, marketing and revenue management, and helped businesses in multiple industries align their commercial teams for measurable growth. If you’re ready to align your sales, marketing, and data into one unstoppable growth engine connect with me on LinkedIn.

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