fbpx

Uvika is a Content Editor at Rental Scale-Up. She uses her experience as a digital nomad and a social media expert to reveal and share vacation rental industry trends.

Roomonitor: Affording vacation rental hosts peace of mind with noise monitoring

Share:

Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn

For local inhabitants and businesses, the disaster is also economic. Florida is a big travel market. With great beaches and world-famous attractions such as Walt Disney World and Universal Studios, the state attracts many families who book a vacation rental for their stay. Cities like Orlando and Kissimmee usually rank high in market size for vacation rental revenues.

Noise monitoring systems are no longer a peripheral amenity, quickly becoming a staple for vacation rental hosts who wish to maintain healthy relationships with their community, as that can decide the longevity of a vacation rental business. Especially post-pandemic, OTAs such as Airbnb have underscored the importance of have noise monitoring systems by offering discounts and even creating the option to add noise monitoring devices as an amenity to your listing.

A leader in this segment is Roomonitor, providing the necessary hardware, customer support, as well as on-ground community support to vacation rental owners and property managers. We had a chat with Roomonitor COO Carlos Lascorz about how the company has evolved in the past six years.

roomonitor vacation rental noise monitoring

What does Roomonitor do and how does it differ from other solutions?

At Roomonitor, our mission is to provide hosts with peace of mind to rest assured every stay is going as expected. When installing our noise monitoring devices in rental properties, we provide real-time data on sound levels. As a result, we can anticipate any noise nuisances, allowing the prevention of any potential incident. This way, hosts know everything is under control, focusing on offering the best guest experience. Noise issuances can vary greatly, from a large group of people with loud music to a family watching too loud TV. On many occasions, guests may not even be aware of the noise they are making. Our service helps ensure long-term relationships with the neighborhoods and promotes sustainable tourism in the local communities.

Despite selling noise monitoring devices, we don’t consider ourselves a hardware company. Instead, our obsession is to support our customers by providing them the best service. That is the reason why our customers can choose different plans (self-managed, rely on our call center to interact with guests, alarm assistant with night agents on the field to do in-person interventions) depending on how they operate.

Usually, individual hosts buy the device directly on our website and manage everything themselves as they’re in full control of their property. In general, they manage guest communications with our auto call service when an alarm is prompted. Some, though, prefer us to take care of the full cycle, and in that case, our call center agents take full control of their accounts. 

As property managers require very close relationships, we have a dedicated team supporting them continuously, adapting our suite of services to meet their needs.  Our founders are both property managers, we understand this business really well, and we know we must be flexible if we really want to help rental agencies scale their business. Customer support, continuous improvement, and great expertise are the key pillars of the added value we provide to our customers.

It’s important to point out that our Alarm Assistant service, which was initially launched in Barcelona, is now already present in Madrid and Paris and will continue to expand to some other large European cities soon, starting with Lyon. This service, which includes a dedicated team of night agents on the field, experts in mediation that can do in-person interventions if needed, is becoming more and more valued by property managers who can outsource a painful part of their operations to a specialized team.

When it comes to noise monitoring, how do the challenges facing property owners differ from those of and property managers? How does Roomonitor address them, respectively?

The ultimate reason to rely on a noise monitoring device is the same for both customer segments: looking for peace of mind on their properties. 

Property managers are, of course, more educated in terms of what available services exist to manage short-term rentals. But, even if noise monitoring devices are relatively new in the industry, it’s a service that is becoming increasingly adopted by large players. 

With individual owners, you can either find some that perfectly understand our technology and why it’s a great solution for their property or a less tech-expert owner who requires a more detailed explanation of our solution.

The fact that large platforms such as Airbnb are now endorsing devices such as Roomonitor is rapidly increasing host adoption and helping our solution become mainstream in this industry.

Roomonitor is a European technology company. How do you think it helps you create a solution that is better adapted to local markets?

Any host in the world can buy a Rooomonitor with just 3 clicks on our site, get it delivered in a matter of days, and start receiving alarms if sound levels are getting too high on their property. Furthermore, this same host can outsource the interaction with their guest through our dedicated call center team, which will take action if needed and keep the host updated.

Having said that, it’s true that in Europe we’ve launched our Alarm Assistant service, which we believe is a great solution for large urban areas, such as Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, and Lyon. Having a trained, on-field team that can speak to the guest at the property if needed is something property managers in these cities value a lot.  In many cases, they were doing it themselves but struggling a lot, and they are thrilled that we are taking over this part of their operations. Also, providing the neighbors with a telephone line where they can request a night agent if there’s too much sound at night is something this service allows property managers to do. Again, it’s proven to be super helpful to improve relationships that were in some way deteriorated.

Roomonitor was among the finalists of VRTech startup competition at VRWS a few years ago. How has Roommonitor evolved since then and what are your plans for the future?

It’s been a long journey. We were born in 2015, and talking about noise monitoring devices to hosts at that time was extremely hard. We had to do a lot of work in terms of host education. But things are now very different, and the industry has matured a lot over the past 6 years. Even Airbnb has now included on the listing profile a special checkbox where hosts can mark if they have a noise monitoring device on their property. 

Since we were born, Roomonitor has been present in more than 1,5M stays. This is the result of the trust our customers have in our solution. And while we were born in Barcelona, we see an increase in domestic and international demand for our solution. As a result, we are now present in more than 45 countries, and our top priority is international expansion.

How will Roomonitor be present at VRWS in Annecy?

Our team is looking forward to meeting everyone at the VRWS. It is a great opportunity to present our suite of services to a large list of international industry attendees and interact with them in person. In addition, we will be doing product demos, presenting our latest product developments, and taking the opportunity to continue learning how we can support this industry.

The Roomonitor team will be attending the 2021 edition of the Vacation Rental World Summit. You can buy your tickets at 50% off here.

Table of Contents

Subscribe to get the latest news for you!

Make your Pricing smarter today, for free.

Try out PriceLabs, the leading dynamic pricing solution for Airbnb hosts and vacation rental managers.

Actionable insights

Take the Right Decisions for Your Rental Business thanks to our Weekly Industry Brief.

Exclusive newsletter for rental entrepreneurs.