Pricing Increases In a New Era and How Watersport & Boat Tour Operators Should Respond

In this article, we’ll attempt to get you to think more deeply about your pricing in relation to what’s happening all over the country and to some extent the world. By now you’ve probably heard the chatter around inflation in the media. Whether or not you pay close attention to macroeconomics, giving inflation some thought is important. To avoid an in-depth explanation of the definition of inflation we just like to think of it as more money chasing fewer or the same amount of goods causing prices to increase.

The pandemic and the government stimulus, as well as supply constraints that have come with it have created the above scenario. A few examples of prices that have recently gone up considerably: lumber, houses, gas, chicken, used cars, Chipotle… you get the point. Again, to avoid a much deeper discussion on why these price increases are happening we’d like to focus on how they are important for your watersport business. 

Larger businesses have teams that focus strictly on financials and how price will impact their bottom line and share price. Thus they are ready to enact price changes at any given moment. Whilst smaller and medium-sized businesses can be too entrenched in the day-to-day operations to give pricing much thought. Many times after a business sets the initial price for its products/services they never revisit them. Re-read that last sentence, it may seem a bit odd but we bet it’s relatable. In some cases, it’s simply too much work to go back through costs/overhead and try to re-price everything and in others, it’s a ‘moral’ choice to avoid ‘gouging’ customers. Regardless of the reason for not thinking about altering pricing we believe it’s now more important than ever. 

We’re not asserting that you need to re-price, or trying to tell you how to re-price, but we are trying to get you to think about the possibility that you’re leaving money on the table that should be in your pockets. Take a look around at your price-setting factors (e.g., employees, fuel, equipment, and rent), your competitors’ pricing, your margins, and pricing strategies. Have they changed significantly in the last year and a half? If so, we’re willing to bet they’ve gone up (save for margins). You should pay attention to them and potentially use that information to re-price your activities to capture additional profit. 

Of course, the pitch here is to let WaveRez’s WaveLogic dynamic pricing algorithm help you take a step in that direction by automating price increases in relation to demand. Learn more about WaveLogic use case scenarios & how to use dynamic pricing for maximizing ROI and please feel free to reach out to our sales team if you want to chat further about pricing as a whole.