Smart Home Pilot - Invitation

[Kyle48]

Hi All,

My name is Kyle, I've been a host for about 2 years at my lovely house in the Blue Mountains. During that time I have had a great (mostly) experience with Airbnb guests but I've had a bunch of issues to deal with in relation to my electricity costs and guests leaving the AC and other things on when they check out. To solve this I ended up building a soloution for my house that syncs with my Airbnb calendar with a device I built that automatically turns certain things on and off based on when guests are checking in and checking out. For example, my house is typically only booked on weekends and largely vacant during the week. I have hooked my system up to my hot water system so it only turns on in preparation for a guests arrival, stays on as normal whilst they are there and then turns off automatically once they have checked out, saving me heaps in electricity cost. I have it hooked up to AC, my floor heating and my hot water service. It's designed to only shut down only those items you dont need running whilst the property is empty leaving the fridge, modem, security system, lights, power points all running as normal.

Because this worked so well I decided to leave my high paying corporate job and try and turn this solution into a business. We have spent six months developing and testing the product, gaining the appropriate approvals and building a host friendly interface. Our next step is to conduct a pilot program with a few hundred hosts around our home base in Sydney to get an idea of what hosts think, what works well, what can be improved and to collect the data to determine how much we can save people (I save about 40% of my total electricity cost).

We are looking to be ready to instal in August 2017. We are prepared to supply, instal and set up the system at our cost for the first 50 pilot customers.

We have a few simple prequalifiers for the trial,

- Your Airbnb property must have it's own electricity meter.

- Your Airbnb propoerty must be within 3hrs drive from Sydney CBD,

- Your whole Airbnb property must be deiciated to short term accommodation rental (on multiple platforms in fine). We don't think this works as well if you are just renting out a room.

- Your Airbnb property must have an occupancy rate of less than 70%. i.e it's empty at least 2 days a week.

If you are interested please let me know and I would be happy to share further information with you on the system and the pilot program.

Kind Regards

Kyle

[John764]

We're in Tasmania, so are outside the 3hr from Sydney catchment (unless you count air travel).

Nevertheless, we have 11 short stay rooms and would be interested in hearing about your product.

It would ideally need to sync with major booking system platforms, not just Air BnB.

Regards,

Justin

Silver Ridge Retreat

Sheffield, Tas

[Kyle48]

Hi Justin,

We would be happy to send you some info on the product and would love to get your perspective on the problem statement and proposition if you can spare the time. I will private message you the deatils and my contact information. We want this to be as useful and valuable to the hosts as possible and hearing from them directly significantly helps.

Our platform can sync with any calendar or booking platform, not just Airbnb. If you are using a master calendar, booking calendar aggregator or just juggling multiple calendars across multiple platforms we can make it work not problem. It would be great to hear more about your specific case.

Tasmania is not out of the question for this year but possibly a bit later in the year after we have piloted the technology in Sydney.

Kind Regards

Kyle

[Gillian19]

Hi Kyle, I would be interested in finding out more about your product. I have two properties at Jervis Bay and they would fit your criteria. Not sure how e cann communicate though outside this thread!!!

Cheers

Gillian

[Helen3]

message them via their profile @Gillian19

[Sally178]

Hi Kylie,

My Airbnb home is in Orange which is 3.5 hours from Sydney however it meets your other criteria. I am wondering if my home may be eligible for your pilot program? I am also wondering about how this may impact on landlor insurance if you have looked into this?

Thanks for being interested enough in a common Airbnb host problem to initiate something which sounds so very positive.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Sally.

[Dot-And-Pete0]

Our B&B is at Wallerawang, 2.5 hrs max drive from Sydney. We purpose built the house with, at one end, 4 guest BRs with ensuites off a generous entrance hall accessing a large guest lounge in the middle of the building. The other end of the house is our apartment comprising BR, bathroom, kitchen/family room, laundry, workshop/studio and double garage. All this on 5 acres overlooking Lake Wallace.

We have under-tile heating throughout, gas  fire in lounge and our family room. Two instantaneous gas water heaters, each service 2 guest rooms and our hot water is from a solar heater. We also have 5.7kW of solar panels but as yet no battery.

Most of our guests stay one night, sometimes two. We have been operating the B&B since March 2016, solely through airbnb, where we list 3 rooms separately. We occassionally have mid-week guests who are based in Sydney but work a day or so in this area. 

We have a circuit breaker board in the study/office where I switch the floor heating on/off to the relevant areas. Floor heating works at Off Peak times twice a day when 'on'.

That's about it. We are at 44 Rocky Waterhole Road. Mobile 0420 354 020.

Cheers, Pete

[Lavada0]

Hi Kyle,

I'm a property manager at Lavada Living. I'm interested in rolling out your pilot for one of our properties in Riverwood. Would be keen to give this a go and roll it out for more later on. 

[Jacqueline169]

Hi

I have a property in Dangar island, one hour and a bit from the CBD

I would be interested in the trial /product

[Matt-and-Clare0]

Interested and meet your criteria 🙂 not sure if it’s too late

cheers

matt

[Kyle48]

Hi All,

Just a quick update for those that have read through my post. We have spent the lage portion of 2017 preparing and testing our product and solution for our pilot. We have now successfully completed all the hard work to get it to a stage that it can be deployed to pilot customers homes and are now actively looking for pilot customers (against the same stated criteria) for install. If you previously expressed interest we will be in contact, if you liked the post and thought I should give it a go, now is the time.

Please reach out and we will give you the details and get you up and running.

Regards

Kyle

[Xiao5]

Hi Kyle, I am interested in your solution. Can we connect via email yihe1128@gmail.com

Thanks

Heroko

[Frauke12]

Hi I am in Glenorie. Do you still need more places? Frauke

[Karen1747]

Hi Kyle,  is your system available yet?  This is exactly what we need in our beach house.  We are finding the place is chewing through the electricity even when nobody is there... it's the hot water system for sure.  Unfortunately, the house is too far away for us to turn it off and on in person each week.

We are very interested in your device!

Karen

[Kyle48]

Hi Karen,

Thanks for getting in contact. Our system is now generally available. If you contact me via our email at kyle@symbiot.technology I would be happy to provide detail on how to get it set up.

regards

Kyle