Automating Key Management for Short-Term Rentals with KeyNest

**Ethan Brown** (0:13)
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Hospitable Hosts podcast. My name is Ethan Brown. I am the General Manager of Asia Pacific here at Hospitable. And today I have the absolute honor of being joined by Pierce Hattie. He is the Australia and New Zealand area manager for KeyNest. And we're gonna talk all things KeyNest, which I'm really excited to get into. So welcome, Pierce, how are you today?

**Pierce Hattie** (0:37)
I'm good, thanks Ethan, good to be here.

**Ethan Brown** (0:40)
So you started in commercial real estate. I'm curious, so our listeners can get an opportunity to get to know you a little bit better. What drew you into the short term rental space and KeyNest specifically?

**Pierce Hattie** (0:54)
So I actually found KeyNest on LinkedIn. I was sort of looking to make a move into a property tech company. And I just found out about KeyNest and thought it was such a great idea and had a meeting with the co-founder Florian. And then yeah, just four years later, they've been enjoying growing with the company.

**Ethan Brown** (1:14)
Awesome. And so was your role, were you straight up the area manager for Australia, New Zealand, as soon as you kind of joined the company, or is that grown over time too?

**Pierce Hattie** (1:23)
Yeah, so they were looking for a new sort of manager to basically handle the operations in all of Australia. And yeah, that was an open role and I was fortunate enough to get the gig. That's awesome.

**Ethan Brown** (1:38)
It's kind of a similar story to myself in a way, other than I was actually a hospitable customer before joining the team. It was my way into the hospitable Asia-Pacific general manager role, and also about four years ago. So we're kind of on a similar timeline. It's interesting, a lot of companies within this industry, in this area, really, I think, need someone that's in the area that's supporting local customers. So it's great that KeyNest have got you in that role and supporting all your customers in the region. For listeners who haven't heard of KeyNest, can you give us the elevator pitch?
How does KeyNest work?

**Pierce Hattie** (2:15)
Yeah, definitely. So we have a network of what we call KeyNest points, which are locations, so normally stores that are open 24-7, that you can store your keys securely with and basically manage access to all of your properties through collection codes or drop-off codes. So if you've got a property in Sydney, but you live in Gold Coast, you're able to just drop off your keys at that point and then send your guests the collection code or drop-off code or your cleaner, and they can access the property basically remotely.

**Ethan Brown** (2:47)
Awesome. And are your customers, like a KeyNest customer, are you open to servicing all levels of customers or have you got a specific niche in terms of the customer using KeyNest?

**Pierce Hattie** (2:59)
Yeah, no, we basically have a very broad scope of customers. So we have people that do dog walking, that will want to pick up keys to go and get the dogs, all the way up to large companies like Made Comfy, who manage over a thousand properties that scale through KeyNest and have that ability to just set up keys all over across Australia.

**Ethan Brown** (3:21)
Awesome. That's great. And obviously, we're here in Australia, but I believe KeyNest not just supporting Australian customers, what are some other regions around the world that you guys are operating in?

**Pierce Hattie** (3:33)
So the head office is in London. So the UK is definitely the main market, closely followed by France. We've got an office there in Paris, and then of course Spain, the United States, and a few other countries. But those will be the top ones for sure.

**Ethan Brown** (3:50)
Awesome. And so can you tell me how KeyNest differs from your traditional lockbox? A lot of our customers will be familiar with both the manual lockbox and then also what we call like a smart lock or a smart device in the traditional sense. What problems does KeyNest solve that those solutions don't?

**Pierce Hattie** (4:11)
So I would say primarily for apartment buildings, oftentimes the body corporate or the building managers are quite anti-lockboxes, you know, putting them outside the building on a railing. It generally gets a lot of complaints from residents. So we provide a solution where you can, you know, secure your keys somewhere closely off site. But then also you're not affecting the other residents of the building. It's also, yeah, there's going to be buildings where there's just nowhere to put a lockbox. So there's a lot of our customers actually don't have much of a choice other than to use KeyNest, especially somewhere like Melbourne, where you don't have, you know, I mean, you've got council cutting off lockboxes. And then there's an issue with actually getting into the apartment building if you have a smart lock on your door, because you still need access to the actual building itself. So KeyNest really crosses that problem for a lot of people.