How do I create a vacation rental website like Airbnb?

Accommodation is a huge problem for any traveler. To overcome this, a creative vacation rental website named “Airbnb” was created. And it became a huge success. 

Now it has over 150 million users and the net worth of Airbnb is 38 billion worldwide. 

After the success of Airbnb, many entrepreneurs are trying to start their businesses like Airbnb. But they lack the most important part of the business - “the website”. 

In this blog, we’re going to talk about actionable steps to be taken to create a vacation rental website like Airbnb. 

What is Airbnb and how it works? 

Airbnb is a vacation rental marketplace platform that bridges the gap between the rental business owners and travelers/renters. 

The name Airbnb came from the original name AirBedandBreakfast.com.

So, how does Airbnb work? 

Airbnb does not own any of the listings on their site. They are just a platform that connects the listing owner with the renters. 

The workflow of Airbnb:

1. Hosts post their listings on the website.
2. Travelers scroll through the listings and book the preferred space. 
3. Hosts accept/reject the booking request from the user. 
4. Travelers pay for the booking fee.
5. Travelers check-in and check out
6. Both travelers and hosts leave a review

So how does a platform like Airbnb make money? It’s simple, they earn from the commission fee for each booking made on their platform. 

How can you create a website like Airbnb?

Before creating your website, you need to know the features that should be available and the tech stack that can be used. 

Some necessary features of Airbnb like website are, 

1. Seasonal Pricing Calendar
2. iCal integration
3. Safer payment gateway - Stripe integration
4. Multiple booking options
5. Multi-language and multi-currency

Technology stack for building a website like Airbnb

We all know that selecting the right tech stack is so important in the process of building a website. Choosing the right tech stack provides flexibility and scalability to your product. 

So, what’s the right tech stack for building websites like Airbnb? 

• Front-end: React, Redux, Bootstrap
• Back-end: Node JS, GraphQL
• Database: MySQL

You can create a rental marketplace platform like Airbnb in two different ways,

1. Hiring developers to build a product from scratch. 
2. Choosing a pre-made Airbnb clone script and customizing it. 

Which one’s better? From a cost perspective, hiring developers to build a product from scratch is far costlier than buying a premade clone script and customizing it. 

There are a lot of clone script solutions providing companies out there to help you. But RentALL - Airbnb clone from RadicalStart is the best script to go with. 

Buy the clone script, customize based on your preferences, test the final product and you are good to launch your startup.