Key lock boxes have a lot of inherent risks for managing property access. Keycafe resolves these problems and provides management tools for key exchange.
How Keycafe Solves the Lock Box Problem for Vacation Rental Property Managers
A key lock box is a convenient tool for vacation rental property managers using sites such as Airbnb, Booking.com, and Homeaway. Realtors and traditional property managers have been using lock boxes for over 60 years and they are still a very popular tool to share keys. In modern dense urban environments, there are several drawbacks that make lock boxes not as good as they once were. Fortunately, there are better solutions available for key exchange and property access management on the market today.
Keycafe presents a cutting edge solution to key exchange that lets you manage access using your phone. You never have to see your keys again, while knowing exactly who has your keys, and when your keys are returned. Keycafe has successfully converted many large enterprise organizations and individual home owners from using traditional lockboxes to a more robust solution to share keys.
The Problems and Risks of Using Lock Boxes
1. Placement
Trying to find a safe place outdoors in a city environment can be challenging to say the least. If attached close to the building, you risk theft of the keys to your property or of fobs that can lead to parking garage break-ins. Often there are dozens of locks on a single post or fence, and you risk having yours cut down by building management or city workers at any time.
2. Weather
Lockboxes outside can be affected by the weather, most models are not waterproof and get flooded with water, freeze in the winter, rust in the summer. Having a guest struggle to unlock a frozen lock in the middle of the night in a dark corner is not the best experience to start their stay in your vacation rental.
3. Changing codes
Lock boxes can be very challenging to change the codes, if you have to go to the site yourself to manually change codes – that defeats the purpose of have remote access in the first place. Costing labour and causing confusion in communicating codes to guests, or worse, never changing the code and have hundreds of people know the code to the unit.
4. Transparency
With a lockbox you have no idea when someone has accessed the keys, if a cleaner remembered to return the key, or when a guest left.
From Honolulu, Hawaii to Livonia, Michigan, many cities have banned or restricted the use of realtor lockboxes due to the many issues stated here. Some cities such as Montreal, Quebec have issued a standing order to cut down lock boxes attached to public properties.
5. Cost
Constantly replacing stolen, broken, or cut-off lockboxes, along with staff time to change codes and replace keys can end up being quite costly.
How Keycafe Solves Lock Box Problems
1. Placement
You can either use the publicly distributed network of lockboxes to hold keys to your properties throughout your city, or purchase your own private lockbox to install in a building lobby or mailroom. Keycafe is approved by many homeowners associations throughout North America as a way to prevent having dozens of lock boxes on a fence outside a building.
2. Weather
The public network of SmartBoxes are installed in well-lit local businesses such as 7-Eleven’s that are open 24/7 and provide a safe and clean environment for guests and cleaners to pick up keys. For private installation you can place them right inside your building’s lobby for easy 24/7 access in a location controlled by you.
3. Codes
Keycafe allows you to manage access down to the minute – you can add a last minute access to a late arrival, or approve a new cleaner to visit the location when a guest checks out early.
4. Transparency
Keycafe lets you track when your guest picks up or drops off your keys. If you notice that a guest has checked out early, you can deploy your cleaning staff sooner and make your whole day easier.
5. Cost
Keycafe offers simple pay-as-you-go pricing, offering seasonal flexibility along with enterprise volume discounts that are automatically applied to your accounts as you scale up. Private box ownership comes with fixed price software licencing to save you money in the long run. The costs of both employee time and money are less than maintaining your lock boxes.
Enterprise Level Key Management Automation
Operating your distributed portfolio of properties using traditional key lock boxes used to be the only option, but is now becoming expensive and unreliable.
Keycafe has resolved most of the issues presented by managing property access with lock boxes by offering a safe, reliable, and remote key exchange service for your guests. Our service also ends up saving you staff time, increasing reliability, and most importantly improving the guest experience, resulting in happier renters and better reviews.
With a public network of SmartBoxes in over 45 cities worldwide, property managers and short term rental hosts are able to simplify access management using Keycafe’s service. Access to keys can be easily granted via mobile number or email, and key-owners can see a complete history of their key pickups and drop-offs.
The Keycafe mobile app also makes it easy for guests to find SmartBoxes, providing walking directions to the designated SmartBox where keys are meant to be picked up or dropped off. Property managers won’t need to worry about safely storing, sending, and changing combinations since access is confirmed using unique codes sent directly to those given access. SmartBoxes are located inside Keycafe partner locations, providing clean and well-lit locations for hosts and guests to pick up and drop off keys.
Private Keycafe SmartBox Networks
Property management companies and real estate businesses can purchase private SmartBoxes for private use. SmartBoxes easily install on any wall type, and Keycafe’s API commands let companies integrate key exchange automation, access, and information into their own apps and software systems. Along with these features, Keycafe has also recently released photo ID verification and real-time photo check-in, allowing key-owners to confirm a guest’s identity and collect images of their passports or national IDs. With Keycafe, users won’t have to worry about the inherent security and convenience issues with lock boxes, and can easily exchange keys and remotely manage access to their properties.
About Keycafe
Keycafe is a technology company modernizing business key management with a cloud-connected SmartBox and accompanying key management software.
In addition to a global Public Network of over 1000 locations for Airbnb users, Keycafe’s Enterprise Solution enables businesses in any industry to manage key access for staff and customers.
