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  4. General Overview

How to use the AI Autopilot feature

Gabriela Garcia
Updated
Purpose Understand, enable, and manage AI Autopilot recommendations and safeguard your pricing strategy.
Best for Property administrators, general managers, and owners responsible for pricing settings.
Use this when Enabling Autopilot, updating pricing limits, or manually protecting selected rates.
Requirements Access to Revenue Intelligence settings for your property.
Expected result Autopilot settings are configured, and you understand how automatic price updates and rate locks work.
Limitations The Smallest acceptable price change setting may block recommendations, and locked room rates remain protected from automatic updates.

Introduction

The AI Autopilot feature in Revenue Intelligence automates rate recommendations in response to market conditions and your property's inventory. This guide explains how to configure it, review its pricing safeguards, and retain manual control over selected rates.

 Which experience are you using? Existing Revenue Intelligence customers may still use the previous interface until their account migrates. Newly onboarded customers use the redesigned Cloudbeds RMS experience, which has different navigation and pricing workflows. See Cloudbeds RMS: New experience and rollout overview for the differences.

Table of contents

How Autopilot works

Autopilot monitors market demand, competitor pricing, and your property's inventory 24/7. Instead of requiring a revenue manager to manually review and accept every suggestion, the engine automatically publishes price recommendations directly to your Property Management System (PMS) or Channel Manager.

  • Frequency: The system recalculates and pushes updates as often as hourly whenever a significant market shift or booking event is detected.
  • Automation: Recommendations are published automatically, ensuring your rates remain competitive even during off-business hours.

Configure AI Autopilot

The steps and screenshots below show the Revenue Intelligence interface described in this guide. In that experience, open Rate Management settings to manage Autopilot.

Steps to access and enable:

  1. Open the Revenue Intelligence platform.
  2. Open the Account Menu in the top-right corner.
  3. Select Settings. You will be redirected to the General tab of the Rate Management section.

Cloudbeds Today dashboard showing the Account Menu open and the Settings option highlighted.

  1. In the Autopilot settings section, select Autopilot ON.
  2. Specify the Smallest acceptable price change and your preference for Exclude the near future.
  3. Click Save Changes in the top-right corner to activate Autopilot.

Rate Management General settings showing Autopilot ON, price-change threshold, near-future exclusions, and Save Changes.

Key Autopilot settings

Setting Description
Smallest Acceptable Price Change A filter that prevents the system from pushing updates for very small currency amounts. The system only pushes updates that meet or exceed this defined threshold. This applies to all recommendations, including those handled manually. This threshold also applies after minimum or maximum rate changes, so a date outside the new boundaries may not receive a new recommendation if the proposed change is too small.
Exclude the Near Future Allows you to define a window of time (e.g., 7 or 30 days) where Autopilot will not run. This is useful if you prefer manual control over immediate upcoming bookings.

Autopilot safety and rate controls

Autopilot operates within user-defined safety boundaries to ensure pricing remains aligned with your overall strategy.

Minimum and maximum rate boundaries

Autopilot uses the Minimum Rate and Maximum Rate set in Room Hierarchy as pricing boundaries. Its automatic recommendations respect these limits. To configure them, see Configure Room Hierarchy & Rate Rules in Revenue Intelligence.

What happens when you change Min/Max rates with Autopilot enabled

When you save new minimum or maximum rates in Room Hierarchy or through Bulk Update, Revenue Intelligence checks existing rates against the new boundaries. Dates with rates outside the new limits are evaluated for new price recommendations, which usually appear within 5 minutes.

With Autopilot ON, eligible recommendations are automatically applied to your PMS during the next optimization. This makes it important to review your minimum and maximum rates before saving any changes.

In Settings → Rate Management → General, enabling Autopilot displays a Heads up warning reminding you that rate changes are applied automatically to your PMS and that Min/Max Rate settings should be configured to prevent unexpected price swings.

The image below shows this warning beneath the Autopilot ON option.

Revenue Intelligence Rate Management General settings with Autopilot ON selected and a Heads up warning advising that automatic rate changes are applied to the PMS and Min/Max Rate boundaries should be checked.

 Before saving: Double-check your new minimum and maximum rates. Incorrect limits can cause unwanted rates to be sent automatically at the next optimization.

Why might a date outside the new boundaries not receive a recommendation? The Smallest acceptable price change setting still applies. If the difference between the current rate and the proposed rate is below this threshold, the recommendation is blocked even when the current rate is outside the new boundaries.

Manual rate controls and locking

By clicking on a specific date in the Opportunities tab or Pickup Reports, you open the Opportunities Dialog. Here, you can manually override rates or lock them to prevent Autopilot from making changes.

  • Lock All: Protects all room types for that specific date.
  • Partial Lock: Use the checkboxes to lock only selected room types.
  • Automatic Locking: When you manually override a rate or click Accept on a suggestion, the system automatically locks that room type. Once locked, the row appears greyed out in the dialog, ensuring your manual decision is protected from future updates.

Best practice: Review recommendations before enabling Autopilot

It is recommended to conduct a Shadow Phase for the first 7-14 days before enabling full automation. During this time:

  • Keep Autopilot Disabled.
  • Evaluate recommendations manually in the Opportunities tab.
  • Adjust your safety limits (Floor/Ceiling rates) until you are comfortable with the system logic.

Frequently asked questions

Expand a question to learn about the Opportunities Dialog, locking individual rates, and interpreting status indicators.

What is the Opportunities Dialog?

The Opportunities Dialog is the detailed modal window that opens when you click on a specific stay date in the Opportunities tab or Pickup Reports.

Opportunities Dialog showing stay-date pricing recommendations, room-type rates, financial charts, and Lock All and Accept all controls.

It serves as your command center for that date, allowing you to review AI explanations, evaluate the financial impact of suggestions, and manually manage room-level rates.

How do I lock or unlock rates?

Locking ensures that Autopilot and bulk actions (like "Accept all") do not change your prices. There are three ways to manage locks within the Opportunities Dialog:

  • Lock the entire date: Click the Lock All button at the bottom left to protect every room type for that specific date.

    Opportunities Dialog with the Lock All control at the bottom of the room-type list.

  • Lock specific rooms: Select the checkboxes next to the room types you wish to protect, then click the Accept button.

    Opportunities Dialog with selected room-type checkboxes and the Accept button.

    Once room types are locked, they appear greyed out within the list. This visual change confirms the rates are published and now protected from any further automated or bulk updates.

    Opportunities Dialog showing room-type rows and recommendations before confirming protected rates.

  • Unlocking: To return a rate to Autopilot management, click the lock icon next to the locked room type, and confirm you want to unlock. The padlock icon will disappear, and the room type will no longer be greyed out, indicating the rate is once again eligible for system-driven updates.

    Opportunities Dialog with locked room-type rows shown in gray and padlock icons beside their rates.

    Confirmation dialog asking whether to unlock the selected room type.

    Opportunities Dialog with an unlocked room type available for rate updates.

 The Accept all button ignores locked room types, so manually protected rates are not changed during bulk acceptance.

How do I identify a locked rate across the platform?

You can identify protected rates by looking for padlock icons in two main areas:

  1. In Pickup Reports (Calendar View):
    • Closed Padlock: Indicates the entire date is fully locked.
    • Open Padlock: Indicates a partial lock; some room types are locked while others remain open for Autopilot updates.
Pickup Reports calendar showing full-date and partial-date padlock indicators.
Full and partial lock icons in the Pickup Reports view
  1. In the Opportunities Dialog: A padlock icon appears directly next to each room type's rate. A blue padlock icon indicates that the rate will be locked after you accept or save the changes. In contrast, a black padlock icon over a greyed-out row indicates it's protected from any further automated or bulk updates.

What do the different checkmarks mean?

  • Blue Checkmark: A system-recommended rate has been accepted and published.

    Pickup Reports date card showing a blue checkmark for an accepted system-recommended rate.

  • Orange Checkmark: Indicates a custom rate was manually entered and accepted. This action automatically locks the rate for that room type, preventing Autopilot or bulk actions from overriding your manual strategy.

    Pickup Reports date card showing an orange checkmark for an accepted custom rate.

What does the blue padlock icon mean?

A blue padlock icon appears when you manually override a recommendation by entering a custom price. This triggers an automatic lock as soon as you click outside the rate field, protecting that specific room rate from being changed by Autopilot or bulk actions.

Opportunities Dialog with a blue padlock indicator beside a manually entered room rate.

Once you accept the rate and reopen the Opportunities Dialog, the row will appear greyed out to confirm your manual strategy is active and protected.

On the Pickup Reports calendar view, these manual rates are identified by an orange checkmark, indicating that a custom rate was pushed instead of the system-recommended one (which uses a blue checkmark).

Can I exclude local festivals or holidays?

Yes. You can manually apply a lock to specific high-demand dates to ensure they are handled manually while leaving the rest of the month on Autopilot. For a detailed look at calendar management, see Month View per Hotel in Pickup Reports.

Once Autopilot is configured, these guides offer more detail on reviewing and managing rate recommendations:

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