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The modern guest expects to have a faultless stay at your vacation rental—but even a spotless apartment with impeccable service might not be enough to secure a five-star review. This is because you’re now in direct competition with hotels and other luxury short-term rentals in a saturated market.
Yet a fantastic guest experience is not your only concern. If you’re to continue growing your portfolio, you also need to tighten your operations, minimize unnecessary costs, and implement scalable processes.
Smart home technology for vacation rentals alleviates these pressures by delighting your guests with maximum convenience as you automate manual tasks and improve visibility over your units—in turn helping you protect your properties, manage them remotely, and scale your operations.
In this article, you’ll see how to enhance the guest experience and reduce your workload with smart home devices for the following areas:
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When Airbnb first came into being, the idea was for Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, Airbnb’s founders, to rent out their spare room and air mattress. And that’s pretty much what guests expected—a simple, clean, and, above all, convenient place to stay a few nights at a time.
That original concept has now evolved into a much more sophisticated offering, and guest expectations throughout the short-term rental space have evolved along with it.
Vacation rentals now compete with hotels for the same guests, which means your guests expect hotel levels of service. They want immaculate, modern properties with a range of amenities to facilitate frictionless, independent stays.
Not only that, but they expect your vacation rental to match consumer experiences they have elsewhere, which means in-app guest communication, easy access to all the information they need, and integrated smart home technology.
So, by understanding and responding to your guests’ advanced expectations, you can not only improve your efficiency and experience as a host, but also bring in more five-star reviews.
As we’ve said, smart home technology adds to the guest experience and can improve business performance, too. Here’s a closer look at how.
The risk of parties or prolonged disturbances is a significant (and justified) cause of anxiety for vacation rental owners and managers. By using smart devices to monitor noise levels and occupancy, you can keep your properties safe from crowds and minimize the possibility of neighbor complaints.
You can also use smart home technology for cigarette smoke detection and to protect your properties and automate your security systems. We look at a standalone device that offers all these features in the following section.
Energy consumption is hard to manage even in your own home. For guests, tightly regimented systems can be the cause of a negative review; alternatively, someone forgetting to turn off the heating or AC before checking out is an unnecessary expense.
However, you can integrate smart thermostats with your property management system (PMS) to make sure your vacation rental energy use is always optimized and under control.
Historically, hotels have managed check-in much more smoothly than vacation rentals—from the guest’s perspective, walking right up to a front desk is much more convenient than having to wait around until someone can hand over physical keys. The last thing guests want is to have their patience tested on arrival or to have to decipher which unit to go to and how to get inside.
Now, though, smart locks and scheduled guest messaging can automate the entire arrival process. Guests are provided with access codes before they get to the property and can then enter independently without you or your team having to be on-site.
If you have any aspirations of growing your rental management business, you need to minimize repetitive manual tasks and automate processes wherever possible. This makes your operations efficient and scalable. Any device or software that improves guest stays while also reducing your workload is key to this.
With smart home technology to simplify how you manage your door locks and the check-in process, energy costs and guest experience, or security systems and party prevention, you can improve your reviews, gain peace of mind, and sustainably expand your portfolio.
The biggest single barrier to improving your vacation rentals with smart tech is the complexity of the solution: If you continue to add smart devices to your units, how can you manage them all in a simple and practical way? If you’re not careful, the solution itself becomes a problem.
To make your job as easy as possible, you need all-in-one devices that integrate with the rest of your tech stack.
That’s why we’ve focused our recommendations on exactly these types of solutions—comprehensive tools that integrate with each other, so you can have a property manager-friendly smart home setup.
Your noise monitoring and occupancy monitoring device should bring together a range of home safety and guest experience solutions.
This gives you the visibility you need to protect your properties and means you can add units to your portfolio without adding to your workload.
Minut is a Swedish startup whose monitoring device gives real-time, privacy-safe information on the status of all your units. You’ll be alerted when noise levels exceed your customized thresholds, or if a crowd starts to gather at one of your properties.
What’s so useful to vacation rental property managers, though, is that Minut is an all-in-one solution. As well as other smart tech capabilities and connected devices for your short-term rentals (STRs), which we discuss below, you can use Minut to automate guest communication.
So, if an issue is detected at one of your units, thanks to its Airbnb and PMS integrations, Minut will send a request for your guest to address the problem, whether that’s lowering the noise or asking unauthorized visitors to leave.
Plus, with Minut’s Call Assist and Guard Assist, trained phone operators and responders are available to take care of noise disturbances for you in person or by telephone at any time – day or night. And you can even use Minut to schedule messages to guests throughout their stay.
With the full breadth of Minut’s smart tools and sensors in place, you can enjoy greater peace of mind and the ability to host with confidence across your entire STR business.
Even without direct or lasting damage to your property contents, cigarette smoke can be an enormous source of frustration for guests, who may very well notice the smell of smoke from a previous stay. Then you’re left having to pay out of pocket for extra cleaning with no hard evidence of anyone having broken your house rules.
With smart technology, though, you get instant alerts of cigarette smoke activity in any of your units so you can take early action.
As well as noise monitoring, crowd detection, and smart lighting, Minut’s Gen 3 sensor uses AI machine learning to identify cigarette smoke in your properties. As soon as cigarette smoke is detected, you’ll be notified, while the guest will receive an automated message to inform them of the issue.
However, just the very fact of having a cigarette smoke detector acts as a strong deterrent to guests who would smoke in your properties. That’s why we recommend informing them of your property’s smart home technology as part of your standard guest messaging—which you can also automate and schedule using Minut.
The modern guest expects a hassle-free stay, which means no delays in being able to access a vacation rental once they’ve arrived.
But implementing keyless entry in your units isn’t the complete solution—for your operations to be scalable, you also need a way to automate the sharing of unique access codes for each stay.
Both of the following systems for self check-in integrate with Minut, allowing you to completely automate how you share access credentials with your guests.
igloohome offers a range of smart locks for your vacation rental units, which you can manage through the tool’s mobile app.
You can manually create unique pin codes for different users (for example, your cleaners), while its system for property management, iglooconnect, automatically generates unique codes for every stay.
igloohome’s smart locks don’t rely on Wi-Fi to operate, you can revoke access remotely, and you can use the activity log to see who accessed which unit and when.
Nuki’s smart hosting system lets you share digital keys with your guests, making self check-in part of a fully automated process that only requires 15 minutes of initial installation and setup time.
The locks are fitted to the inside of your vacation rental property’s door, and once you begin using them, you can manage them remotely via their Wi-Fi integration. Nuki’s Power Pack battery holds charge for up to six months, and you can easily recharge it by connecting to a power source via USB-C cable.
Also, with the Nuki Keypad, you can set up PIN code entry, meaning no smartphone or app is required for guests to access your properties.
Smart technology offers the dual benefit of improving the guest experience (no more arriving to a freezing unit or stepping into an oven) while allowing you to reduce your energy bills.
Also, a sensor that monitors for mold risk, especially in damp climates, protects your homeowners from structural damage and unsightly build-up of mold on walls, ceilings, and furnishings.
Minut’s integration with tado° works for Smart AC Control and Smart Thermostat to automate energy savings as soon as your guests check out.
The automation can also help prevent freezing pipes by maintaining a base temperature in your units between stays and automating a temperature rise in the lead-up to a check-in.
Other smart thermostats you can consider include:
Oltre alle altre funzionalità di esperienza per host e ospiti, Minut monitora la temperatura, l'umidità e il rischio di muffa. Questo ti aiuta a garantire un soggiorno sicuro e confortevole per gli ospiti, anche se gestisci la proprietà da remoto.
Insieme agli altri strumenti intelligenti e ai processi automatizzati, sarai in grado di creare un modello di business scalabile in modo da poter stupire i potenziali proprietari di immobili e continuare a far crescere il tuo portafoglio STR.
Vuoi che i tuoi immobili si distinguano dalla concorrenza? Offri ai tuoi ospiti comandi ad attivazione vocale sulle funzioni domestiche intelligenti come il controllo della climatizzazione e l'illuminazione per aggiungere un ulteriore livello di comodità.
Altri vantaggi di un assistente virtuale includono l'intrattenimento domestico su richiesta sotto forma di musica e podcast, oltre a consigli locali su eventi e dove mangiare. Tutto ciò migliora ulteriormente l'esperienza degli ospiti e proietta l'immagine di un marchio contemporaneo di case vacanza di lusso.
Gli assistenti vocali più diffusi includono:
Ecco altri dispositivi intelligenti facili da configurare e che potrebbero ricevere una menzione speciale nelle recensioni dei tuoi ospiti:
La tecnologia Smart Home ha il potere di distinguere i tuoi servizi dagli altri hotel e case vacanza di lusso che operano nella tua zona, aiutando la tua attività a prosperare nonostante l'intensa concorrenza che attualmente attraversa il mercato STR.
Per ottenere il massimo dalla tua tecnologia domestica, trova soluzioni che semplifichino il tuo lavoro di host e gestore di proprietà. Ecco perché devi consolidare il tuo stack tecnologico con dispositivi all-in-one e soluzioni intelligenti integrate.
Con il dispositivo standalone di Minut per la protezione della casa, la prevenzione delle feste e la messaggistica agli ospiti, puoi offrire agli ospiti un soggiorno fantastico e sicuro in linea con il tuo marchio STR. Oltre alle recensioni impressionanti, indovinate ed entusiastiche, mantieni una visibilità a 360 gradi su tutto il tuo portafoglio man mano che cresci.
Un dispositivo completo per la protezione degli affitti a breve termine come Minut è un dispositivo intelligente indispensabile per le case vacanza. Ti aiuta a proteggerti da parti e danni alla proprietà, migliora l'esperienza degli ospiti e automatizza i processi manuali come la messaggistica agli ospiti.
Non tutti i dispositivi intelligenti offrono lo stesso livello di privacy degli ospiti. Ecco perché è necessario utilizzare una soluzione come Minut, che fornisce solo le informazioni pertinenti al gestore della proprietà senza mai registrare conversazioni o condividere i dati privati degli ospiti.
L'unico aspetto negativo dell'utilizzo della tecnologia intelligente negli affitti a breve termine è la complicazione eccessiva della configurazione della casa e dei processi operativi. Ma con soluzioni all-in-one e tecnologie integrate come Minut, puoi assicurarti che il tuo stack tecnologico sia semplice da gestire e scalabile.
