If you’re considering a furnished apartment for your next travel assignment, there are some important safety features to look for. Every furnished apartment should have deadbolts, sprinkler systems, and conduct fire safety drills. Those are table stakes.
Lodgeur’s founder was interviewed by Nurse Journal about safety and security for solo travelers renting furnished apartments. In 2023, these are the safety features every furnished apartment should offer:
Having hosted thousands of solo travelers, we know that robust criminal background checks are an important factor when you choose where to stay and the communities in which we operate all require criminal background checks for guests and staff.
You want to be sure the other guests have been screened and that any staff in the building have been screened. Your furnished apartment provider should use a robust background screening tool to check for as many domestic and international criminal record databases as possible.
Lodgeur uses Autohost.ai, which checks 280,000+ databases across the US, Canada and global resources! These databases include everything from sex offender registries to alias and identity cross checks.
We sometimes have guests cancel their bookings as soon they need to provide their ID for the background check and that’s ok! Strong security systems deter bad actors before we even screen them out. Hosts that don’t require background checks become magnets for the guests with a criminal background, placing everyone in the property at risk.
Lodgeur stores the keys to furnished apartments in a Keycafe digital lockbox that each user opens with a unique code. The technology is so good that Mercedes-Benz and Toyota dealerships use it for car keys.
When a customer books with Lodgeur, our technology creates a unique code that corresponds to that specific booking. This system offers important security measures:
Good hosts ensure that their noise-monitoring equipment is privacy compliant. Technology like Minut ensures that no speech or sounds are captured, but decibel levels are monitored.
This technology maintains your privacy while deterring partiers from booking the apartment next door to you. We’ve even used the decibel logs to prove our guests did not have an unauthorized barking dog!
With a gated parking garage attached to your apartment community, you’ll enjoy the added layer of security that comes with restrictive access via key fob entry. Most of our guests bring a car, even if they use the METRORail or a scooter to commute to work. (See our post about using the METRORail.)
While guests appreciate the convenience of keeping their car cool in the Houston summer or dry during a thunderstorm, the parking garages provided increased security for guests and staff. The security cameras and direct building access are especially popular with solo travelers.
Some hosts use apps to find cleaners or other errands-runners, without ever meeting these service providers. This can be a safety risk. In-house teams that are hired, trained and managed by the property manager help ensure service providers have been properly vetted.
Lodgeur reduces risk by having a trusted, in-house cleaning and operations team. Most of our cleaners have been with us since we started 2019, and have prepared apartments for more than 8,000 guests! We believe it’s good business to know who has access to our guests and our apartments.
At Lodgeur, we understand that feeling safe in your home is important. We also host a lot of solo travelers in our furnished apartments, such as travel nurses, patients in the Texas Medical Center and summer interns. That’s why we only operate in Houston’s best apartment communities and we’ve implemented additional tech-based security measures to give our guests peace of mind.
Safety should be your number one priority when looking for a furnished apartment. Make sure to ask about the safety features that are included in each rental. Lodgeur uses sophisticated background check platforms, key access management, noise monitoring, along with trusted, in-house staff and gated parking garages to ensure our guests feel safe and secure while they’re away from home.
