Guestable: Keycafe Creates a Streamlined Check-in Experience

The short-term rental industry has grown significantly over the past few years, and nowhere is this more evident than in big cities. As Airbnb and other platforms immerse themselves in metropolitan communities, it provides the opportunity for owners to make unprecedented levels of income from their real estate. It also presents a new set of logistical challenges that come with continuous turnover.

When we first started Guestable, our goal was to create a full-service short-term rental management company that allowed people to take advantage of this growing market while freeing them from the day-to-day operations. Back then, most of our Airbnb guests expected and preferred an in-person greeting upon their arrival. While scheduling a greeting around a guest’s arrival sometimes required a great deal of flexibility, it also ensured a level of security and access control that seemed unmatched by any other approach.

Over time, as Airbnb entered the mainstream and hotel platforms like Booking.com and Expedia expanded in the industry, the guest profiles started to diversify and booking lead times began to shorten. It became common for people to book within a day of check-in and prefer self-service access. Business travel became one of the fastest growing short-term rental trends and it wasn’t long before Airbnb made self-serve check-in a requirement for Business Travel Ready status. All of a sudden, the market was changing and we knew we had to adapt quickly and effectively.

Like many other companies in the Airbnb management sector, our initial approach to the evolving operational model was lockboxes and smart locks. We would still give the option of a greeting, but we found a surprisingly high majority preferred self-served check-in. In many ways, this was great because the experience had improved for most guests and we could leverage our team for more inspections and support. While the system brought some results, it certainly wasn’t perfect and a new set of challenges emerged.

One of the biggest problems we encountered with lockboxes was that guests sometimes had trouble locating them. We made detailed videos and instruction manuals which helped, but there were still some guests who felt it took longer than they expected. In addition, it became apparent that we would have more issues tracking keys. We built systems that would result in better notifications in the case of a missing key, but it wasn’t an error proof solution. Finally, from a security perspective we had to manually change our access codes after every check out.

After a few months, we began exploring new options and that’s when we discovered Keycafe. We were very impressed with both the technology as well as how they had strategically positioned the boxes in areas where we were having the biggest issues with key management. The online dashboard was intuitive and they even had a mobile app, which meant all of our on the ground resources could be logged in at any time. We decided to give it a try with a few of our units with the intention of scaling up if it went well.

Once we went live, almost all of our pain points disappeared. Unlike a lockbox, a Keycafe box is in a retail location where a guest can simply put the address in their phone’s GPS will ensure they can find it. During our initial trial phase, every single guest was able to find the box and successfully retrieve the keys. We found out later that a couple of the guests had questions when they got to the box, and contacted Keycafe directly whose support staff helped them within minutes. While most of the boxes we use are in coffee shops and restaurants, having the 7/11 locations around the city unexpectedly made our 24/7 guest lockout support much easier. Instead of always coordinating an in-person meet or providing a backup lockbox code, the guest had the option of simply going to a nearby 7/11.

In terms of tracking keys, we’ve been able to easily manage everything online. We know exactly where keys are, who has taken them, and when they’ve been picked up / dropped off – saving us countless hours of headaches. Additionally, we never have to worry about changing codes because it happens automatically, since Keycafe integrates directly with platforms like Airbnb to ensure that the access codes will be sent to the guest.

Since we went live with Keycafe, we’ve found that we provide a higher level of service to guests and our more organized systems allow us to scale without compromising quality. We started as a small operation and were able to expand in cities such as Los Angeles, London, Toronto, Chicago, Miami, Montreal, and Seattle. If it wasn’t for a company like Keycafe, it would be impossible to operate units that are geographically dispersed with the level of attention to detail that’s required. Keycafe’s technology and customer support gives us the peace of mind that security and guest experience will be handled optimally, and this value is intangible.