Skift Take
Vacation rental owners and property managers are using technology solutions to mitigate their risks in an era when they face the prospect of getting pushed into irrelevancy by the large distribution platforms if they don't agree to instantly confirmable bookings. Buck the instant booking trend? The penalty is seeing their listings drop toward the bottom of the heap.
With instantly confirmable vacation-rental bookings picking up momentum on sites ranging from Airbnb to HomeAway, owners and property managers are turning to noise-monitoring devices in their homes and other measures to ensure that guests aren't throwing wild parties, conducting porn photoshoots or otherwise behaving badly.
One of the solutions is NoiseAware, which offers a sensor that plugs into a wall outlet and sends notifications via text or email to owners based on decibel or time of day (or night) parameters that are customizable.
David Krauss, Dallas-based NoiseAware's co-founder and CEO, said he came up with the idea for the company in late 2014 after renting one of his properties on Airbnb to a couple of guests who threw "a major party."
Although a police report was filed after noise complaints, Krauss only found out about the issue a couple of days later when the building's lawyers contacted him.
Likening the NoiseAwa
