AirBnb guest experience with Nuki

Discussion
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Hello,

I do not have a Nuki yet.
I have seen documentation, videos, etc, so please correct me if I’m wrong about my understanding of Nuki and how it works for guests.

I have 2 different AirBnb scenarios:
A - Apartment in a building so it needs the Nuki Opener;
B - House with the door opening directly to the street and for security reasons I do NOT want to install the keypad on this one

So in these scenarios I do not want to have a “only the keypad” solution but I’d still want my guests to have a very easy experience.

For both scenarios, these are the steps my AirBnb guests need to do (acc. to this document):

1 - Get message/link (via AirBnb/email/…) about an app they need to install
2 - Install the Nuki App
3 - Get the message (via AirBnb/email/…) with a code corresponding to the lock(s)
4 - Use the code in the Nuki App to add the locks
5 - Go to the Nuki App to Open the door(s)
6 - On Checkout they receive a message to uninstall the Nuki App

My opinion of this is the following:

  • For some guests, step 2 is difficult (free space, security concerns, skill challenged, …, …).
  • Steps 3+4 seem simply cumbersome as you already did some installing, and now need to do more steps - the guest just wants to unlock the door(s).
  • And step 6 well, it should never have been there in the first place, so for most guests it is probably a relief to delete the app but for many others it will be clutter that will remain in their phone as they will forget to delete it.
    So, this is not the experience I want to give my guests.

On the other hand, I’m currently using another smart lock solution.
That other smart lock is lacking is many aspects of the host experience (both SW and HW).
But the guest experience is amazing.
And, I’d like to have a better experience as host (buying into the Nuki solution), but I will not do that at the expense of the guest experience.

So, what did the people from the other smart lock company do to have a better experience?
They changed from an App solution (similar to yours) to have a guest webapp.

With that, the steps for the guests are just these:

1 - Receive the link for Nuki for their reservation (*)
2 - Click the link and open the locks

(*)
The link points to the service the guest requested with everything already preconfigured: the locks, the dates/times, even the keypad code can be shown here (additionally to sent via message).
No other menu/configurations are available for the guest.
For security, the link has a parameter for the session that is 32 characters long, but you can even improve on that if you feel necessary.
Imagine for instance: https://web.nuki.io/guests?session=IUHGfdr56yhnJKjhdrTghjkjnb456ygN

These are the steps I believe the guest wants to do.
(from experience with current and previous versions of this competitor’s solution)

The steps Nuki currently has are a bunch of steps that made sense to the tech guys (I should know, as it is my background).

So, am I just wrong?
Or should I create a feature request?

PS: This also seems to go in line with some requests people were making a couple of years ago here: Simple 'guests'version of Nuki App? - #3 by NoSync

1 Like
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Hello,

Yes, you correctly described a scenario, as the keypad would not be an option for you, the guest would need to use the Nuki App to open the door. Feel free to add a feature request based on your suggestion and start collecting votes for it.

Best Regards,
Orsolya

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Thanks @Orsolya for your reply.

In case anyone wanted to look for it, just created it here: AirBnb guest experience with Nuki (Feature Request)

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We wanted to take the opportunity to THANK a LOT Nuki using a grain of irony.

What could be nicer to have a function since 4 years (it was the main reason why we bought the system back then) and now to see: guess what, you have to pay for that. Is that greed?

Especially when considering that the system (nuki) wasn’t fully developp from scratch, like:

  • missing USB-Battery pack (but yes, we could buy it later, for extra cash)
  • the Battery pack has two USB-C on each side (over-development (costs!) on the back and tedious to plug in (thinking of the older generation?). Why not one USB-C in the front that has easy acces and will fit all USB-C connectors ? How could that happen?
  • not able to set up the amount of days when getting the guest entry code: instead of the three numbers of days, why not set the input as variable and let the customer (in that case we who paid lot of money) when we want to get the code. In our case it would have been at the time of the Airbnb-Order.
  • why not able to set manually the range of “locking and unlocking” to save battery power, as it has been requested over the years?

So thanks but no thanks. We won’t recommend Nuki anymore.

For the sake of fairness: phone call with Adis from Nuki was very friendly and empathic. Thanks a lot for that! He got all the stars.

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Thank you Brigitte,

we bought one Nuki in the suggested configuration for AirBnb. That means Lock + Bridge + Keypad. The plan was to buy much more if everything goes well.

Two weeks that lock worked perfectly fine. Then all over sudden it stopped working. The Nuki support is hopeless (if reachable) and it took another 4 days (and uncountable hours on the phone trying to reach Nuki) to get someone to look into the problem.

Now the first week offline is over. The only information we have is that to solve the problem we need a new firmware. But they cannot confirm if that firmware will be ready next week. So we are potentially another week or much more offline.

Let alone that we go any information how we get into a remote lock which is offline.

Another highly frustrated user… Great “Guest Experience” indeed.

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Another lock went suddenly offline. Not reachable via Bridge NOR directly via Bluetooth. I was forced to go drive back to the office to open someone the door

WHAT IS GOING ON AT NUKI?

1 Like
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Please stop x-posting.

The issue you are referring to is discussed in this thread Nuki Bridge lost connection to Smartlock 4.0 - #8 by MatthiasK

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Thank you for the feedback which we are going to evaluate internally and of course feel free to reach out again if needed.

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