Airbnb Spawned an Ecosystem of Startups That Sweat the Details So Owners Don’t Have To
Money has been pouring into digital travel startups that help keep the noise low and the sheets crisp
David Krauss had parlayed his Dallas condo into a successful Airbnb listing until one fateful weekend in 2014. Then, a couple of guests threw a party so loud it elicited more than a dozen noise complaints from neighbors, a police report and an angry letter from an attorney. His reputation in the building was so sullied he decided it was best to sell the unit -- at a $30,000 loss.
But Krauss, a former independent real estate developer, wasn’t finished with Airbnb. His misfortune gave way to an idea for a device -- “a smoke detector for noise” -- that sends alerts directly to hosts’ phones when guests get too loud for too long. That way owners can intervene well before neighbors are disrupted or worse, the police are called. His company, NoiseAware, is just one of hundreds of startups that are riding the coattails of the home-share titan and its rivals, which include Booking Holdings Inc. and Expedia Group Inc.’s HomeAway, as demand for such rentals skyrockets.