Using Technology To Avoid Nightmare Guests

Have you as a host ever had a problem where somebody's either smoked in your property or they've caused lots of noise, had parties? These are the type of things that as hosts we're always worried about. You never want that nightmare guest. And today we've got a very special guest who's going to talk about a technology which is going to help to prevent that and give you more control whether or not it's a direct booking or through an ota. This is just a very cool piece of tech that you need to know about. So if this is your first time here, you're listening to the booster podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the trainings, and most importantly, the confidence to go out there and get more direct bookings. My name is Liam Carolan and today we've got Richard Coleman, who is the VP of marketing from Minute. And it's an amazing piece of technology that if you've not heard of, then you're really going to Enjoy the next 20, 30 minutes. So welcome along, Richard. Thank you for joining me today on the podcast. So Richard, can you give yourself an introduction and also introduce what minit is, the elevator pitch?

Absolutely. So, as you said, my name is Rich, I've been at minit for about five years now and have seen the company grow quite substantially in that time. And not just inside of the company, but also in the types of customers we have and the customers we have around the world. With now over 100 countries, we have hosts using Minute. And essentially what Minute is is Minute gives you insights into your property. So it lets you know the noise levels in decibels in the property, it lets you know the temperature, the humidity and if someone is smoking in the property. So all the things you worry about guests doing. So if that's them throwing a party and disturbing the neighbors, you set a threshold and that can be different for the day and the night and we notify you if that goes above that level and we can also contact the guests on your behalf. If they smoke in the property, our sensor can detect tobacco smoke and once again let you know and also measure suggest to make sure they quiet down. We do occupancy as well, so we can see how many people are in the property. So if it's supposed to be booked for two people and 15 turn up, then we also know that. So yeah, so basically we have in room data that allows hosts to know that the guests are adhering to the house rules and not disrupting neighbors or the wider community.

As a Host, what do I need to do and how many of these devices do I need to have, you know, to protect my home?

It really depends on the type of home you have and what you're concerned with. Most of the hosts that we talk to are concerned with noise, because if there's a lot of noise, it often is the precursor to a party and it's the thing that can disrupt the neighbors the most and likely end up in a, in a neighbor complaint and then you potentially losing the listing. So if noise is the real concern, typically we say you only need one of these devices. So you pay per home per year, you pay the subscription fee for the year, you get the device, and then you put it in a common area, such as a living room. If you have a five bedroom villa in Spain and you're worried about smoking and noise. And our new sensor is also fully weatherproof, so you can install it inside the property or outside. So it really depends on your concerns and the size of the property. But the majority of our users have one and it goes in the common space and some users might have two or three if they have a larger property or are concerned about both indoor and outdoor noise.

How would the host know there's noise going on? What is the, what does that look like to them?

So we have both a mobile app and a desktop app. So if you want someone looking at that, they can see a noise graph over time and it will show you the decibel level. So we don't record anything. You can't listen on any conversations, purely all you see is a graph that shows the decibel level historically and you can set a threshold that you're happy with. And that can be different during the day and during the night. So during the day you might say, look, it's okay if people are up to 90 decibels, and then at night I want them to be below the threshold is 70. And then you have a noise timeline. So what you can say is, if it's above that threshold for five minutes, I want to get a receiver notification in the form of a push notification to the app and an email to either myself or someone in my team. If it continues being noisy for another five minutes, I want to automate a text message or an email to the guest to tell them that, hey guys, look, you've been noisy for 10 minutes, we want you to quiet down. You also have the option get the device to flash and sound so the device itself will start flashing to allow the guests that something isn't quite right. Or we have an auto call feature where you can type a message and that message will be auto read to them via a phone call. The data shows that in 94% of cases, when it is loud for five minutes, the first text message just saying like, hey guys, just a reminder, the house rules are after 10pm you need to be below X level. And 95% of the case that that's enough to get them to quiet down. And it's often the case that they reply and say, sorry, kind of forgot, or we were watching a film, didn't realize and it's fine. And it's only that 5% of the time where it might be an issue. And one of the things we tried to do to counteract that is, is in the UK we have a guard service. So it's a service called Guard Assist. And if it's three in the morning and people are being noisy and they get the text message and the phone call and they don't quiet down, we can actually send a trained guard to the property who will knock on the door and then report back to you. So that's the service we're offering in the UK at the minute. And we'll eventually, obviously plan to hope to spread wider. But I think that's, that's, as you point out, it's a really key thing is when you have people in your property, you go to bed thinking, am I going to be woken up at three in the morning by my neighbor saying that there's a party or a raid going on next door? And what we're trying to do is kind of give hosts peace of mind that like, you can worry about the bigger picture stuff and we'll worry about the daily logistics and dealing with the guests.

One of the things you mentioned there was house rules. And obviously house rules are just so important. What is, what does a host need to tell their guest about your device and where would you recommend them? When do you recommend they tell their guest about the device?

So we have some material on our website, maybe a few blurbs you can put in your listings. So we actually recommend everyone make it obvious they have this device and we have some collateral that you can use to kind of inform guests about not just what the device does, but how it does it. And so we use a type of technology called edge processing. So when you have a Google or an Alexa, what it does is it records what you say, it sends it back to Google or Amazon, it's analyzed there, and then the answer is sent back to the device. All of Our processing is done on the device itself. Nothing is sent back to us. So we aren't able to listen into the conversations. We're not able to like no one could hack the device and listen into the room. So I think it's really important to be as upfront as possible. We don't want this to be hidden or kept secret. We think it's important you tell the guests and you tell the guest that one of the things we focus on most is privacy. Like the last thing we want is there to be any scandals or things about our products or the industry. And so privacy focus has always been kind of top of mind for us. We never wanted to include a camera and we never will. We only record decibel levels, not actual sound bites. So yes, there's material we have on our, on our website and we, we even have a page for guests that you can point them to on our website that kind of informs them about the product and why it's a good thing. And, and one of the things we always focus on is, is we want our product to be beneficial for the guests, the hosts and the community. And it's not just about the hosts. We want the guests to have a nicer experience because the host is able to monitor the humidity and temperature levels within the property to make sure it's a comfortable environment. We want the host to feel safe and confident in hosting so they do it more often. And we want the community to see that this host is using our products to ensure the guests aren't having a negative impact on the community itself. So yeah, we provide a lot of collateral and it's very important to us that we kind of, we make short term rentals work for everyone involved in the process.

How does it track the, the temperature and is there anything we can do if we see that the humidity and the temperature is, is high? I'm looking at it from a cost saving point of view as a host. But you mentioned as well, it can then be comfortable for your guests. So I guess this is for places outside of rainy England, is that correct?

Kind of. I think when I, when I joined Minute five years ago, the temperature feature was always kind of a bit of an edge case. People liked it and they said like, it's nice to know that like the guests are comfortable and the team doing kind of the changeover are setting it to a nice ambient temperature so when guests turn up, it's not freezing cold or boiling hot. And over the last couple of years, as you mentioned, that's changed quite drastically. And I think not just in the uk, but across Europe, kind of less so in the US at the minute, the cost of energy has gone so high that people are now wondering how can I use this data to, to reduce my energy bills? And one of the things we've been really pushing in the last year is we've done an integration with Tado who make smart thermostats and smart AC controllers. And so at the minute you can use minute connected to your pms. And what we can do is turn off the air conditioning or the heating in between guest days. So if you have one guest booked Monday to Wednesday and then another one booked Friday to Monday, we can turn the heating of the air conditioning off in between those two guests so that if the first guest leaves the air conditioning running, it's not running for two days whilst the property is empty. And that's becoming something people ask us more and more about. And we're getting more requests now for integrating with other types of smart heating controls than kind of anything else because it's kind of top of mind. And I think people also nowadays are looking for more like return on investment. And so the noise monitoring is kind of an obvious one where if you can prevent parties, you save money. And the cigarette smoke is another obvious one where you might have to have a professional cleaner going to get and get the smell out. But the energy bill ones is one that's really resonating with people at the minute and that's something that we're putting a lot of focus on in the year to come.

Thank you so much for your time this evening. As we record this, I hope plenty of people go and check out minute old habits die hard minute off the back of this. So it's minute.com and the notes will also reflect that you'll be able to see, you know the website. It's very easy one. Thank you for listening and if you think that anybody else could get some, you know, sort of good information from this or be inspired by this, please do share, please do like it and thanks very much for, for tuning in. We know there's lots of places you can put your attention. Really thank you for putting it with Boostly. That's it from us. Bye for now.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Boost Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, Like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the T is loosely making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.