Techsplained with The Guest Innspector and... KeyNest

**Deborah Labi** (0:01)
With so much software available in the short-term rental industry these days, it's increasingly difficult to keep up to date with what's on the market, and to determine whether it's a maybe or a must-have for you and your business. So meet one provider each week in a short interview learning what they do and what they offer. So if you have around 15 minutes to spare, it could prove to be a very good investment to stick around. So let's see who and what is out there, one by one, with me, Deborah Larby, also known as The Guest Innspector. Hi, everyone, and welcome to techsplained with The Guest Innspector. There are a number of aspects to deal with when managing a rental and keys are a vital one. Getting keys to your guests, your cleaners, and maintenance people can be a bit of a headache. And when those keys are lost or misplaced, or in a pocket heading to the airport, smart locks are a great solution, sure, but aren't always possible or suitable. And today I'm chatting with Florian, who will explain to us what Keynest offers. Hello, Florian, how are you?

**Florian** (1:10)
I'm very well. Thank you so much for having me.

**Deborah Labi** (1:12)
Pleasure. Thanks for coming along. So Florian, let's start. Can you please explain what Keynest does in one sentence?

**Florian** (1:23)
Absolutely. So we are a global network of locations, where all sorts of customers from short-term rental house, house to property managers, can securely store their keys, and then give remote access to their guests, cleaners, contractors, and whoever they want to give access to their properties.

**Deborah Labi** (1:41)
Great. Okay. So I'm a property manager. I want to use Keynest. What is the process and what do I get from you? What are the different things that you can offer me, as a property manager or someone that has to deal with keys?

**Florian** (1:55)
Absolutely. So you will have the option of using thousands of locations in different countries, where you would take your keys to and they would be stored there. And so you will have your online dashboard, and you see where your keys are stored, and which keynests they are, et cetera. And when you have a booking, for example, on Airbnb, we usually then API-integrate it, so that directly on the booking platform, and someone books your Airbnb, they get a message saying, thank you very much for booking. Please go to this location and provide them with this six-digit code. And when the guest goes there, they will receive the keys, and you as the property manager will get the notification that the keys have just been collected.
And hence, you can manage all of the access from your dashboards.

**Deborah Labi** (2:44)
Right. So you are integrated with PMS. So once a booking comes through, is this an automatic thing then that is generated? The property manager doesn't have to allocate a code or process it?

**Florian** (2:58)
Absolutely. So we're integrated with a lot of PMSs, but we also integrate a lot of our customers directly. So if you don't use a PMS, but your own systems or software, we can also have a direct integration. So everything is possible to automate, which when you go from managing 10, 20 apartments to go managing 50 to 100 or even more, doing everything manually becomes a haunting task really. So that's why we place a lot of effort and also emphasis on being able to integrate very efficiently with our customers.

**Deborah Labi** (3:33)
So if I sign up with you, I need to go and see my nearest to the property Keynest location. And then how do I get a fob? I believe you have fobs that I put with the key. How do I get the fob? And then my other question is, when I put my keys in the Keynest location, are they in a secure box? How are they stored there?

**Florian** (3:56)
Two very good questions. So the first one with the fobs, all of our locations have these fobs. So you would drop them there with the drop off code, and the staff and the locations will attach a new fob to your keys. And all of these fobs look identical, which is also security aspect. So keys are at all times anonymous. And yes, the keys are in a secure box, which is basically behind the counter, where only staff in our partner locations and that we work with can access the keys. So they're not publicly available, of course.

**Deborah Labi** (4:28)
So these fobs end up with unique codes every time they're going to be taken away. And they're going to be obviously monitored where they are and when they come back.