Ep 28 - Automating Airbnb Check-Ins: How Keynest Transforms the Guest Experience

**Ray** (0:00)
Welcome to episode 28 This week, we have Pierce from Keynest. Welcome to the show, Pierce.

**Pierce** (0:07)
Thank you, Ray.

**Silvia** (0:08)
Welcome, Pierce.

**Ray** (0:10)
And before we get deeper into your role at Keynest, and all the great products and features, let's start with one of our guest stories. Silvia, do you want to kick us off?

**Silvia** (0:21)
Yes. This subject is particularly because we have Pierce from Keynest. And Pierce will tell us more about his company, but more importantly, he may be able to make suggestions on how these situations could be improved. So I'm talking about check-ins right now, and that's exactly where Keynest can help. So with mine, as we know, mine is a shared Airbnb listing. And so I live in it as well. And so with the vast majority of my guests who arrive, I greet and meet them and give them a very short tour of my apartment and make them feel welcome. So mine doesn't require self-checking, unless they're actually running late, and I can't be there because I have some other place to go. So in that situation, I do need to make other arrangements for them to grab the keys and from some other situation. And I don't know if Keynest can help on such short notice. The other alternative is I have a co-host, but she's not always available. So that's me. But a couple of other things I wanted to talk about was that I own a studio in another building nearby, and recently I received an email with a letter from that strata manager. And the heading of the letter was Airbnb and stays. Now in this building, they're all studios.
So I thought when I saw the email heading, subject heading, I thought, here we go, they're going to talk about the 180 day rule and how being a studio, that's all you would be allowed because you're not in a shared situation that you can do it all year round. Such are the New South Wales rules on short term rentals. So when I opened the letter, I was quite surprised because what it said was, we are setting up a cupboard at the entry of the building. And the idea is that all the owners who have lock boxes attached to the rear gate or the front gate, and there are lots, let me tell you, and it looks unsightly. So they've decided that they're going to put this cupboard and everyone who has a lock box needs to call the building manager, have the lock box registered and placed in this cupboard. You will be given the code to the cupboard and then your guests can open the cupboard, find their lock box and come in. And any lock box that has not been registered or removed will be removed and disposed of. And I couldn't help but think how far we've come that it's addressed in this manner. Because when I started in Sydney 10 years ago, no one had even heard of Airbnb. And I was very pleased to see that this particular building is actually addressing the issue, acknowledge addressing and doing something about all the lock boxes that are at the front. So again, Pierce, I don't know if you have any suggestions. I'll go into my next story, but you may have suggestions on what can be done in these situations to improve. The other story I wanted to mention is that recently I picked up cousins, well, family, friends really, from the airport, flying in from Italy. They were jet lagged. It was 11 o'clock at night and they were very tired. I was driving them to their Airbnb that they had booked, and they gave me the list of instructions in order to do a self-check-in. And I was just surprised at how involved it was. So I just thought I'd talk about that very briefly. I've got it in front of me now because as I say, it's quite involved. So the first thing you had to know is that you had to go to the back of the building, not the front. Obviously, if you're in an Uber, you get the Uber driver to drive you to the back. If you're arriving by public transport, then it goes into a whole lot of details on how you get to the back of the building. Okay, so then you're at the back of the building and it says, at the cafe, so it directs you to a cafe at the back of the building. Walk up three steps up to cafe, turn left, walk past the tables and chairs, walk towards the white wall. On the wall, on the right-hand side is the high, is the light brown cupboard, is the key storage. It has a silver panel to press code to open, then it tells you the code. Then the key safe code is, it gives you that code, is on the second bottom rail, fourth from the right, black has a silver key ring on it. Inside the cupboard, the safe is on the second bottom rail, it's the fourth along the right, there is a silver key. Okay, so they've repeated that. Pull down on the black cover to see the keypad, press C at the bottom to clear, enter the digits, then press upside down triangle to open. Please proceed process to close lock. Please leave keys in safe on checkout. Then with the keys, turn back towards the cafe on the left-hand side, you will see two glass doors together, and it goes on and on, and how to get to it. And I just think these poor people were so jet lagged that, you know, it took four of us to figure it all out. One to hold the luggage on the street because we didn't know where we were going, so we couldn't keep taking the luggage with us, and three of us to figure it all out. And I just thought surely there's a better way. Although this example is exactly what my building that I just mentioned with the studio is doing. They're installing a cupboard, which then has a code. Then you've got to find the lock box, which then has another code. I don't know. It just seemed a lot to me.