StorTrack, a provider of competitor-pricing data, market-analysis tools and first-stage due diligence for the self-storage industry, has upgraded its Optimize price-tracking tool. The product will now gather rate data more than once per day to help facility operators better monitor and manage their unit pricing. The company decided to make the upgrade after seeing a spike in the number of self-storage businesses turning to dynamic-pricing models, according to a press release.

“Price volatility is currently a reflection of day-to-day activity, but what we have noticed is that an increasing number of operators are changing prices more than once per day, meaning we need to adapt our system to reflect this,” said Cindy Rivera, product marketing manager.

Though price fluctuations “flattened” over the last six to 12 months after steady growth from 2016 to 2019, a recent one-week study of 10,000 self-storage facilities conducted by StorTrack showed that more than 90 percent of operators changed unit pricing at least twice per day, with more than 40 percent of unit types affected, the release stated.

“As competition increases, the rate at which pricing is manipulated is accelerating,” company officials said. “This kind of dynamic pricing—which is standard in travel markets like air travel and hospitality—is a result of increased use of sophisticated, data-driven revenue-management systems, and an increased emphasis on price management as the key driver of customer acquisition and overall store performance.”

Launched in 2014, StorTrack serves thousands of self-storage facilities across Australia, Europe and North America with dynamic pricing data, local market intelligence, market-valuation insights, reports and market-analysis tools. It’s owned by Detroit-based Aggregate Intelligence Inc., a global company specializing in data on air travel, e-commerce, events, hospitality, rental cars, retail and self-storage.