Vacation home rental platform Vacasa is rolling out a suite of smart home technology to its 35,000 homes designed to make the guest experience smoother and ensure rental home guests are good neighbors.
The company is adding three elements to its homes, at no charge to homeowners:
- Keyless locks with uniquely generated codes specified through the company app for each stay and housekeeping visit. Codes are date- and time-limited.
- Wi-Fi routers that bypass a homeowners personal network and ensure a simple experience for guests with an easy connection. It also allows the company to spot and handle network disruptions quickly.
- Noise monitoring that can identify high noise levels by monitoring sound waves — there is no microphone or recording — and alerting local teams if there is a problem before neighbors are affected.
The technology has been used in roughly 13,000 Vacasa homes so far. It is slated to roll out to the rest throughout this year.
“Vacasa technologies are purpose-built for the entire vacation rental experience, from booking to check-out, home care to local operations, yield management to customer service,” said CEO Matt Roberts in a written statement. “Installing these technologies in Vacasa homes represents a major investment in the homeowner and guest experience, operating as good neighbors in our communities, and making our vacation rentals the most technologically advanced in the industry.”
Since its start Vacasa (Nasdaq: VCSA) has focused on ways technology can maximize returns for homeowners as well as benefit guests and even its own employees with tools for efficient home management. This latest suite of tools is the result of the company's work as well as its recent combination with TurnKey, an Austin business it bought in 2021.
“We compared notes and figured the best course going forward,” said John Banczak, Vacasa’s senior vie president of innovation and co-founder of TurnKey. “Part was using the technology TurnKey had developed, take the existing technology and really improve it to adjust it to the scale of Vacasa.”
The team has been working on this for the last six to nine months, he added. The installation process takes about an hour for each home and it is combined with a regular maintenance or housekeeping visit.
For homeowners they can use the smart locks on their own visits to their properties and can bypass the Vacasa Wi-Fi and use their own networks that now no longer have to be shared with guests.
Banczak noted that privacy is always a key element in development for both homeowners and guests and goes through legal review. He said the keyless entry is tool that has been well received by homeowners and the noise monitoring is just a sensor for vibrations.
More features and tools will likely be coming, but this is the foundation, he said.
Vacasa was founded in 2009. The company is in the vacation rental market. It differentiates itself from others in the space by not only marketing rental homes and connecting customers with properties, but by also managing rentals for owners.
The company went public in December after a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The company reported third quarter revenue of $329.9 million. It had third quarter profit of $32.8 million.
