New short-term rental licences have been frozen in Portugal’s pressure zones since Decree-Law 76/2024, with no review due before 2027. If you already hold a licence, there is only one way to grow: spend less and lose less time on each unit you already run.
The day of a check-in
None of this is hypothetical: it is the week you already know. On the right is what changes once the door, the sensors and the air conditioning stop needing you.
Someone has to be free to hand over the key. The guest arrives three hours late.
A trip to the apartment. Traffic, parking, 90 minutes gone.
The neighbour calls to complain about noise. Nobody knows whether it is true.
The guest leaves at 9am with the air conditioning at 18 °C and the window open. Eight hours on your bill.
The key does not turn up. Changing the lock cylinder costs 120 € and half a day.
A leak under the washing machine in an empty apartment. Found by the neighbour downstairs.
The guest gets a code that only works on the dates of their booking. Nobody drives anywhere.
They let themselves in. You get a notification that the entry happened.
The sensor had already flagged it at 23:10. One message to the guest settled it before the complaint.
The open window switches the air conditioning off by itself. Zero hours wasted.
The code expires on its own. There is no key to lose.
The sensor detects the water in seconds, the valve closes and an alert reaches your phone.
The numbers
Change the figures until they match your operation. We would rather the calculation were yours — a number you do not recognise is no use for deciding anything.
What this calculation assumes, so you can disagree with it. The trips counted are only the ones that exist to hand over or collect keys — those disappear, because the code reaches the guest on its own and expires on its own. Other visits, cleaning and maintenance still happen and are not in here. The 7 % of waste is not a guess: it is two published figures multiplied by each other, taken from the conservative end. First, how much of the bill is climate control. The US energy agency measures 19 % of a home’s electricity going to air conditioning alone. In a short-term rental it is more, for two reasons: whoever touches the thermostat is not paying the bill, and in Portugal winter heating also comes out of the socket. We use 30 %. Second, how much of that climate control is avoided with presence sensors and an open-window rule. A 2021 study in the Journal of Building Performance Simulation finds between 24 % and 58 % in hotels, depending on climate and sensor type. We use 24 %, the bottom of the range. Thirty per cent times twenty-four gives 7.2 %, and we rounded down. What we do not yet have is a measurement in a home of our own. Both studies are of hotels and American homes, not of a one-bedroom flat in Lisbon. As soon as we have the before-and-after of a real bill, we will replace this figure with the measured one — and if it is worse, we will tell you that too. In the meantime, set the field to zero and read the calculation on time alone: in most cases that already decides it.
What gets installed
Nothing is built in and nothing needs an electrician: everything plugs in, runs on batteries or sticks to the wall. If you ever leave the apartment, the equipment goes with you.
The three questions we always get
The rules and the lock run inside the apartment, not in the cloud. If the network drops, the guest’s code still works. Only remote notifications wait until the connection is back.
No. The presence sensors know someone is in the room — they do not know who, they do not record, they have no lens. That is why they can go in a bedroom without raising any problem with the guest.
It will, sooner or later. There is a person to call, who installed that apartment and knows what is in it. And every apartment keeps a physical emergency key box: technology is never the only way in.
The next step
It is 22 € per month per apartment.
Installation is quoted per portfolio — it depends on how many units there are, what the doors are like and what is already in place. We will not give you a number over the phone that then does not hold: we look at two or three of your apartments and the quote is right first time.
Book 20 minutes