From guesswork to growth: Black Bear Lodge’s revenue story

Black Bear Lodge is a cozy retreat in South Lake Tahoe with rooms, suites, and private cabins, offering an inviting and charming destination experience. 

When Co-owner Rachel Carlson first saw the property, she envisioned its potential. She and her husband turned that vision into reality, growing the original nine-room retreat into a 31-room boutique haven.

But with a larger team and more complex operations, their passion for hospitality was getting lost in the daily grind of manual tasks. Pricing was a chore, guest communication was fragmented, and the path to growth was unclear.

Rachel chose Cloudbeds as the foundation for their next chapter.

With Cloudbeds providing a solid foundation for Black Bear Lodge’s operations and guest communication, the team were freed up to focus on optimizing their pricing strategy.

“We were definitely losing out on revenue,” Rachel explains. “We’d set it and forget it. On slow weekends, we might drop rates manually and hope for an impact. We had very few levers to pull.”

They hesitated to push rates higher during peak season, fearing they might overprice and lose bookings. This fear, combined with a lack of time to analyze market data, put a ceiling on their growth. 

“We don’t have the personnel to sit in the office crunching numbers or watch market signals. That knowledge just isn’t something we could have in-house.” She continues, “Everyone in boutique hospitality got into this to create experiences, not to do revenue management. None of us want to spend our days behind a computer.”

Through the Cloudbeds Marketplace Rachel discovered TakeUp, a powerful AI revenue management software that adapts in real time to market demand, competitor rates, and booking trends.

The integration was effortless. “It was pretty light,” she recalls. “I think we clicked a few things and sent a link off to TakeUp… we didn’t have to do anything.”

TakeUp seamlessly connects to their Cloudbeds data, replacing guesswork with a data-driven engine — and unlocking the revenue upside they couldn’t see before.

This has helped Black Bear Lodge capture more demand during slow periods while confidently pushing rates higher when demand surged. The most telling example? Their highly sought-after two-bedroom cabin, which they thought had maxed out at $650 a night, now hits $750.

“I didn’t even know we could charge that,” Rachel admits. “I didn’t realize there was so much growth on the high end.”

For Rachel, the future of hospitality isn’t about more screens; it’s about more humanity. Technology should liberate hoteliers, not chain them to their desks. The partnership between Cloudbeds and TakeUp does exactly that.

By managing the complexities of revenue in the background, the integrated solution allows Rachel and her team to focus on what they do best: creating an unforgettable experience for their guests.