I recently passed a shop in London that had a sign outside for KeyNest for Airbnb hosts. A company that allows you to securely store and collect your property keys. I’d actually never heard of this company before I spotted the decal. As it was pushing the Airbnb logo, I decided to give it a look.
The premise is a secure key safe service, giving you a bit more security and freedom. Ideal for use as a secure pick up and drop of location for guests, family & friends, builders & contractors, cleaners, estate agents and rental owners so you can see the appeal for Airbnb hosts as well.
The service boasts some impressive statistics too. It reports 5 million guests served, over 5,000 locations around the world and keys collected or dropped off every 45 seconds!
Taking a look at their Trustpilot page and reviews online, I can see they’ve been well received. It’s clear their customer support is top notch are they are keeping users happy with the service.
Given the boom in growth and popularity for Airbnb and short term rentals, it’s reassuring to see supporting businesses with confidence in the short term rental market.
How does it work?
As this was the first sign I’d seen for it, I was curious to know how many locations were around. This kind of service will only really work if there are access to a wide variety of locations for you to choose to store your keys at, for convenience.
The majority of the locations are city focused with a huge choice in London for example. But on checking it out further, I actually have a location less than a mile from my property. This location is a partnership with a parcel locker service. This makes it a prime and central location which could work if I ever decided to use it.
Once you’ve chosen a location and dropped off your keys, they can be stored there as long as you need. You just send your guest the location and unique code before the booking. They can then give this to the shopkeeper who will hand over the keys.
For peace of mind, using the service allows you to track the collection and deposit of your keys in real time. The time-restricted codes provided adds an extra layer of security measures for you. This makes sure that only the correct guest has access to your keys.
Pricing
The next thing I wanted to know was the pricing. It offers both pay-as-you-go and membership pricing.
Pay-As-You-Go
£5.95 + VAT per key collection & £0.69 per day storage fee, or £0.30 per day if stores for 30 days.
Monthly
£24.95 + VAT per key per month including unlimited collections and no storage fees.
Annually
£19.95 + VAT per key per month including unlimited collections and no storage fees.
*Prices and plans correct at the time of writing.
To me, the pay as you go pricing option is ideal for an emergency if you can’t handover to your guest or contractor in person. For example, a repairman that would only be visiting for a day. However, due to the cost, this wouldn’t be practical pricing for even a casual Airbnb host in my opinion.
It’s clear that the pricing is set up to get you to commit towards the membership and long term options. These are more attractive value wise and much simpler and it makes more sense to sign up for these.
Someone new to hosting or with a limited hosting window might opt for the Monthly membership pricing. Professional hosts or those that do it at scale will likely want the annual membership.
Summary
The only criticism that I could find, was that the pricing is a little too expensive for me personally to justify it for my hosting use.
I offer self check in for my rental with a lock-box outside the property. The £30.00 I originally spent on the key safe was, and remains, my only cost. This works fine for me and my location. However, I can appreciate the extra security and convenience of using a key-safe service.
For myself and my hosting style, it’s actually cheaper and easier for me to keep offering self check in with my own lock-box. I keep this outside my property.
However, I actually think this as a service is a good idea. Particularly if you own property in a city or a busy location. It’s definitely worth considering for many Airbnb hosts.
Hosting is hectic enough as it is and I like that this lets you to take a slight step back from hosting duties to free up more of your time, but still allows you to keep control over the security of your property.