How do you rent accommodation without being present? How do you check-in? Donnini Patrizio, the founder of Keesy, explains how the checking-in process has been automated.
How is the check-in process automated when you rent out your apartment or your room through Airbnb?
Whomever has had the experience, either in the capacity of his / her main business, or as a second job, knows very well the problems associated with checking in and checking out.
Often it is hard to even organize meeting your would-be guest. There are a great variety of potential problems to complicate any meeting between two parties including late arrivals, communication problems relating to new information or updates, and simple misunderstandings.
The actual meeting between the host and the guest can be fraught with difficulties made even worse if you have a regular job or many conflicting commitments.
Precisely for these reasons, the Italian start-up, Keesy, was established to automate the whole check-in and check-out process.
Talking about Keesy, we have the pleasure today to interview the founder & COO, Patrizio Donnini, who explains his idea of automating the check-in / check-out world of accommodation-sharing.
1) So where did the idea for Keesy come from?
“I founded Keesy in Florence in 2016 thanks to an intuitive notion linked to my experience as a host. I wanted to find a solution to simplify the checking-in / checking-out of apartments on Airbnb — and for all other types of accommodation — that don’t have a reception facility. So we designed and established the first automated system for self check-in. The owners can manage every step of checking-in, bureaucracy included, so saving time and resources. The guests have complete 24 hours-a-day, no-time-limit freedom-of-access to the place of accommodation.
2) How does it work and what are the services that you offer? Who are your target groups?
We turned to both small owners who take the opportunity to gain from home sharing, and to professional managers of rented structures — the so-called property managers — helping both to offer the best kind of welcome to their guests.
All check-in steps are managed in an automated way. Through the Keesy web platform and app, our customers can buy and book the service at any time. Guests receive a link and a personal code to make the check-in online (in seven languages) including the collection of documents, the sending of data to the police, the verification of the guest’s identity including visual comparison made by the operator in real time, the cleaning, the digital signatures on the contract and the calculation and collection of the balance for the stay.
We are the only service on the market that guarantees verification of the guest’s identity as required by the Italian Consolidated Public Safety Act.
For access to the apartment, the manager can choose one of two solutions: Keesy Smart allows doors and gates to be opened by simply using a smartphone. Using Keesy Box, keys can be picked up and dropped off at Keesy Points.
Moreover, the app provides the guests with a multimedia guide which has everything they need including how to get to the apartment, house rules and how to use appliances and accessories.
3) How do you choose your Keesy Point and Keesy Street locations?
Smart and Digital services are available all over Italy. Keesy Point is active in most important Italian cities and towns with significant tourist activity. For example, we are in Florence, Rome, Milan, Venice, Turin, Cagliari, Como, La Spezia, Desenzano del Garda, Rapallo and Bibione. In addition, some weeks ago we started initiated our adventures abroad by opening the first Keesy point outside the Italian market in Nice, France.
We have had many requests from all over Italy, and soon we will be going abroad again, this time to Greece.
4) Keesy is a young company but with strong growth. Can you tell us about its evolution? You forecast that the services linked with home sharing will show a big increase in the next few years. Do you see your range of services increasing?
We grew quickly, achieving very important targets in just 18 months. Today Keesy has 12 employees, and we oversaw 15000 uploaded apps. We have 1500 apartments registered, and handled 30000 guests.
In the first quarter of this year, the number of check-ins grew by 360% compared to the same period last year. For 2019, we are preparing to receive more than 1000 daily travellers on peak days. I believe that these numbers illustrate our evolution quite well. Obviously, we don’t intend to stop here. We want to consolidate our presence in the home-sharing and short-term rentals market by becoming better structured and more professional. Operators need services that optimize processes and guarantee profit margins.
We want to consolidate our position with ‘Smart ‘ services and expand our ‘Point’ networks. On top of that, we want to bring self-checking-in into other accommodation areas from like ‘Camping’ and B&B.
5) You are on Mamacrowd, the Italian crowd-funding equity platform. How will the funds raised be spent?
We decided to start the fundraising campaign on Mamacrowd to attract resources and to strengthen ourselves in the commercial area.
We will use the funds for the CRM system, the development of technology through the interaction of user-experience improvement and marketing activity — and through communication about new openings. All the details of the campaign are available on www.mamacrowd.com/keesy.
Constantly evolving home-sharing.
The development of the Sharing Economy generates new needs and new business opportunities. We see, increasingly, the creation of new firms that offer complementary home-sharing services. Before now, such a thing was unthinkable. Keesy is an example of a company made to answer issues ranging from specific and immediate instances to automating the checking and control of all the hosts on the various home-sharing platforms. Most probabily, home-sharing will play a key role. According to a PWG analysis, services linked to house-sharing will grow 50% by 2025.
Over the next few months, we will keep updating the news about this sector, including relevant interviews