Image: KeyNinja Marketing Director Tricia Yong and Co-Founders James Vuong and Michael Wang.
Melbourne Airbnb hosting service KeyNinja is expanding its national footprint as it opens for business in Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast following strong demand for short-term property rentals.
The 24/7 secure key delivery service, which provides Airbnb property managers and owners
with an increased level of security by using dedicated Ninjas to physically hand over keys to
guests instead of a lockbox, have checked-in more than 60,000 guests in Melbourne since April last year.
The one-year-old startup has set itself a target of obtaining 500 new short-term rentals in Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast on its platform in the next six months, providing
approximately 100 contractor jobs for Ninjas over the next six months to service the new
areas.
The expansion also comes as a result of the ongoing controversy surrounding unverified self-check-ins and unruly holidaymakers and a spike in Airbnb listings in Queensland, which has doubled in the past 18 months to 28,900 listings according to realestate.com.au.
Earlier this month, a Melbourne Airbnb property was trashed by 300 drunken teens costing
the owner thousands of dollars in damage who has since called for more vigilant verification
processes.
“Unmanned key-safes continue to be a problem for the short-term rental industry,” said
James Vuong, co-founder and CEO of KeyNinja. “The process is unverified and poses a risk
for fraudsters to check themselves into a property and come and go as they please, which
can result in chargebacks and lost income for property owners and hosts. We provide a layer
of human verification so Airbnb hosts, as well as guests, can have peace of mind.”
In addition to heightened security, the solution allows enterprises and individual hosts to
have more time and resources to focus on other areas of management.
“We wanted to build something that covers all the finicky aspects of a short-term rental, but
at the same time respecting the regulations and instilling a vigilant process,” adds Vuong.
Nicole from bnbprofessional, a group of Airbnb owners focused on automating & systemising
the ins and outs of hosting, elaborates on the need for such a service in Queensland and
New South Wales: “KeyNinja has been a great help and service to our BnB Professional Blueprint communities. With no meet and greet service available previously in Sydney, Brisbane & the Gold Coast, it’s been great to see KeyNinja expand into those areas based on the need from our community.”
Property managers and hosts using KeyNinja have access to 24/7 customer support and a
network of cleaners and taskers and can keep track of all completed, ongoing and future booking and cleaning jobs through a proprietary KeyNinja Dashboard.
KeyNinja currently has more than 20 enterprise clients including some of the biggest
Australian short-term rental management companies such as Roomerang, Airbnb
Handsfree, DreamHost, Mono Apartments and Luxico.
