Hosting from another country works right up until the evening it does not. The difference between a small problem and a ruined booking is almost always the key system, decided months earlier by someone who was thinking about towels.
Design for the worst arrival, not the typical one
Your typical guest lands at four in the afternoon and follows instructions. Design for the other one: a delayed flight, a hire car collected at midnight, a phone on four per cent, and instructions written in a language they read slowly.
That guest needs a handover that works in the dark, without you, and without a phone call.
The three handover methods
Meeting guests in person. Best experience, worst scalability, and it fails exactly when flights are delayed. Fine for one property nearby, painful for anything else.
A key safe. The workhorse of the Costa Blanca, and reliable if you accept that it is a mechanical device living outdoors.
- Mount it out of direct sun and salt spray where you can. Units near the front corrode.
- Give it a service each season: brushed clean, correctly lubricated, dials checked.
- Photograph it and send the picture with the code, so the guest knows which box.
- Change the code between bookings. Every guest who has stayed still knows the old one.
Smart locks. Convenient, and popular for a reason, but they are electronics on a door in a hot, humid, salty climate. If you fit one, keep a mechanical override and make sure somebody local knows how to use it. A flat battery at midnight is a lockout like any other.
Spare keys, and who holds them
One set with a trusted person in Altea. Not with the guest, not in a hollow rock, not in the meter cupboard: those are found by the people you least want to find them.
No reputable locksmith will hold keys for your property, and you should be wary of anyone who offers.
Between bookings is when locks get fixed
The gap between check-out and check-in is short, but it is the only time anything can be done without an audience.
- Cylinders: if a key has gone missing, change it, especially if anything with it showed the address.
- Stiff locks: a lock that is stiff in May will fail in August, when every changeover is back to back.
- Terrace and patio doors: these get more use in a rental week than in six months of ordinary living. Adjust them before a guest forces a handle.
- Key safe: clean it, test the code, check it is still firmly mounted.
The economics
A cylinder change costs a fraction of one lost night’s booking, and considerably less than a bad review that mentions the phrase “we were locked out”. Emergency call-outs at midnight are the most expensive hour to buy, and nearly all of them were predictable in daylight.
Set up the relationship before you need it
The single most useful thing a host can do is have a locksmith who already knows how they authorise work. When the call comes at eleven at night, it takes two minutes instead of twenty: you confirm the booking, approve the cost, and the guest is inside.
That arrangement, and how remote authorisation works, is described here. If a guest has just told you the keys are gone, the response order matters and is worth reading first.