The idea that one of your guests is disturbing the neighbors or causing damage to one of your properties is extremely stressful. If it’s ever kept you awake at night, you’re not alone—many short-term rental (STR) property managers worry about the potential trouble one bad guest might cause.
This is why you need visibility across all your units—so you can quickly check an app to see that everything is in order, knowing that if a problem does occur, you’ll be immediately notified.
But which monitoring system is best for your business? Your solution must be one you can trust, one that’s simple to install and use, and one that simplifies your job rather than adding complexity to it.
To help you make an informed choice, this article compares NoiseAware and Roomonitor, providing you with an overview of how each system works and a list of their top features. Also, we look at an alternative that provides all-in-one protection with features including cigarette detection, window break detection, and scheduled guest messaging.
With the right technology protecting your STR portfolio, you’ll have no more stress about bad guests, plus enjoy a lighter workload and no barriers to growing your business.
Vacation rental noise sensors have evolved considerably as technology has advanced to allow for multiple home protection features. They give you increased visibility, help assure your homeowners that their properties are in safe hands, and improve the guest experience.
Crucially, these software solutions help make your operations more scalable—so managing property safety, noise levels, and guest messaging are no longer a limiting factor when it comes to growing your portfolio.
With these core ideas in mind, you need your noise monitoring tool and occupancy sensor to carry out far more than just those two essential functions—you need to consolidate all your security and safety solutions across your entire portfolio, have access to historical data, and enjoy a streamlined way to manage issues when they occur.
Here are some of the features to look out for in your noise monitoring solution:
With these features in place, you’ll be able to prevent disturbances, automate manual tasks like guest messaging, and scale your operations. Below we compare NoiseAware and Roomonitor, later looking at the all-in-one alternative, Minut.
NoiseAware is a privacy-safe short-term rental noise and occupancy (branded “CrowdControl”) monitor that automates alerts whenever there’s an issue, as well as messages to your guests.
As with Minut and Roomonitor, go into your “do-it-all dashboard” and you’ll be able to adjust noise-level thresholds by property. With these in place, you’ll receive an alert whenever the volume goes past that decibel limit for a sustained period of time.
Also as with Minut and Roomonitor, your customized noise limits can take into consideration the time of day—so, typically, you’d have higher thresholds for daytime and lower thresholds for the evening and night.
Automated messages to guests, a feature that NoiseAware has branded “AutoResolve,” provide you with a scalable solution to guest management. This saves you from having to manually message guests to keep the noise down—unless the problem persists, which NoiseAware says doesn’t happen in 90% of cases.
NoiseAware also offers a battery-operated weather-resistant sensor for outdoors, whose batteries generally last 3-6 months. Unlike Minut’s outdoor monitor, this can’t function unless it’s set up within 100-150 feet (30-45 meters) of your indoor sensor, with which it shares data.
Roomonitor’s privacy-safe noise monitoring system offers protection for short-term rentals, along with its cigarette smoke detection feature and a guest management service (known as “Alarm Assistant”).
The assistance service is triggered when noise levels exceed your customized limits—First, the Roomonitor team analyzes the data to verify it’s a problem that requires their intervention. They then send a text or make a call to the guest asking them to address the issue. If the problem persists, trained security personnel visit the property to manage the issue in person.
As with Minut’s Call Assist and Guard Assist services, this saves you from having to manually handle messaging and protects you and your team from any potential confrontation. It also means you have a scalable solution in place that can run on autopilot, even in the middle of the night, if you’re away, and when managing remotely.
Alternatively, you can choose to manage guests personally, in which case you’ll receive a notification whenever a noise issue arises. You’ll then be able to reach out to guests yourself and track their response using Roomonitor’s mobile app for real-time noise data.
Minut is a complete solution to STR protection and security, with noise and occupancy monitoring, cigarette smoke detection, and professional assistance services, plus a range of other smart security features.
As well as vacation rental visibility and protection across your entire portfolio, Minut integrates with Airbnb and your property management system (PMS). This allows it to automate alerts and requests, plus schedule guest messaging for a better guest experience and to minimize your manual guest comms.
“We've got everything from two bedroom apartments that sleep four people right up to huge country lodges that sleep 19. So Minut is being used in a whole different amount of scenarios across our portfolio and works for all of them.” Nick Lyon, igloo.scot Director Read the case study
Minut is a true all-in-one solution to STR protection, with not only noise and occupancy monitoring, but multiple other security measures, environmental hazard detection, and automated alerts with guest outreach.
If you’re an Airbnb host or vacation rental property manager who wants to grow your business, Minut’s automated processes mean you can add units to your portfolio without adding to your workload—you’ll have visibility across all your units, whether you have 10 or 100, and along with it the peace of mind that if a problem arises, Minut’s automations can handle it.
Plus, with the platform’s Airbnb and PMS integrations, you can use Minut’s guest messaging feature to provide essential information to your guests throughout their stay. For example, you can run all of the following guest comms on autopilot:
Minut lets you scale your rental business, improves the guest experience, and provides you with the portfolio-wide visibility you need to manage your units with confidence.
NoiseAware and Roomonitor are leading noise and occupancy monitors with customizable thresholds, mobile apps, and user-friendly platforms. The biggest difference between them is that Roomonitor also offers assistance services, where trained agents communicate with guests in case of an issue.
If, though, you want an all-in-one solution to home protection, you need a wider range of features, including not just cigarette detection, temperature monitoring, and trained assistance, but also window break and motion detection, mold risk analysis, and security alarm detection.
With all this capability consolidated into one solution, you’ll be able to:
That’s why, if you want to grow your STR business, you need a comprehensive home protection system like Minut.