Use Digital Access Devices for Vacation Rentals and Other Short Term Housing

Digital smartlocks and lockboxes can be used to allow access to vacation rentals and short-term units, for occupants or even staff and vendors.

The can be done whether or not a digital access device is assigned to a listing in ShowMojo, because device access codes can always be requested directly from the Digital Access Report. For digital lockboxes, this means the lockbox can be easily used in a vacation rental situation where they are being regularly switched between units.

Some Implementation Details

Occupants can be provided access codes via phone or email. The codes would be pulled from the Digital Access Report by your staff.

Vendors and staff can access digital lockboxes via:

In terms of deployment, we've seen digital lockboxes used in two different deployment strategies for vacation rentals:

  • One Digital Lockbox Per Unit: This is where an individual digital lockbox is assigned to an individual unit and stays there. 
  • Floating Digital Lockboxes: In this scenario, digital lockboxes are moved from unit to unit as they are needed for "turns" and new occupants.

Tracking Assignments in ShowMojo (or Not) 

If you already have an external system for tracking and updating digital access device assignment to short-term units, then the rest of this section might be of little interest to you, as it would be an unnecessary effort to duplicate that tracking in ShowMojo. (As a reminder, access codes can be pulled from the Digital Access Report regardless of whether those devices are assigned to a specific listing in ShowMojo.)

If you are not managing device assignments elsewhere, then the Digital Access Report can be easily used to tack those assignments to short-term units. And unit reassignments can be performed directly from the Digital Access Report.

To do this, create Not Real Estate listings to represent your short-term units. Using Not Real Estate listings -- instead of normal rental listings -- ensures that ShowMojo does not syndicate, market, or otherwise generate leads for these listings. The assumption, of course, is that you are using other sites and services specifically for this purpose.

You can also use Listing Groups, and the listing group filter on the Digital Access Report, to easily isolate these short-term units from the rest of your portfolio.

Was this article helpful?