How Do You Make An Airbnb-style Homestay Rental Booking App?

Airbnb is one of the most well-known “sharing economy” businesses. It has altered people’s travel habits. The platform provides vacation home rental services by allowing homeowners to rent out their properties to tourists. If you’re looking for ways to create an app similar to Airbnb, you’ve come to the right place.

As the travel industry recovers from the pandemic shock, now is the ideal time to create a home-rental app! This blog delves into how Airbnb works, the Airbnb business model, the app’s tech stack, and, most importantly, how to create an Airbnb-like app. So, as you try to shake up the vacation home-rental industry with your entrepreneur mind, continue reading!

Airbnb.com is a website that allows hosts to list their homes for rent and guests to find and book them. Each Airbnb listing is created by a person or a company. Airbnb does not own any of the rental homes.

Airbnb is a one-of-a-kind company in many ways. It popularized the concept of “home-sharing” and changed people’s minds about staying in someone else’s home while traveling. Prior to Airbnb, most people would only consider it if they knew the person who would be hosting them. That is no longer the case as the internet and technology transform social structures all over the world!

How Does Airbnb Help Guests and Hosts?

Let’s get right to the point about how Airbnb works for guests.

1. User downloads the app and completes the guest registration process. The user can add required information such as a profile picture, ID number, and so on.
2. Will then be directed to the Airbnb home screen. The user can use this page to look for a specific location.
3. After a user has found a location, Airbnb has a lot to offer. It has sections for places to stay, things to do, adventures to go on, and restaurants to eat at.
4. The user can then go to the Stays section and rent a place to stay. Dates, Guests, Work Trip, and Filters are among the options available.
5. They receive confirmation of their request for a stay after submitting it.
6. That’s all there is to it! The user is now ready to embark on a smooth and memorable journey.

Building An Airbnb-style App: Stand Out With Add-On Features

1. Calculator of Prices

The tool can be used by guests to estimate the cost of their accommodations and excursions. In addition, hosts have the ability to set the standard price.

2. Reports on the status of reservations

It assists in learning more about property listings. You can examine the demographic ideas, the most popular locations, and the amount of revenue.

3. Distinctive Themes

Apps like Airbnb have a variety of themes to choose from, allowing users to personalize their experience. This is something you can do as well!

4: Currency Conversion

It is possible to include integrated tools that allow app users to easily convert currencies. This feature is ideal for international trade.

A great feature to include is personalized calendars to help hosts manage rental house availability.

A Step-by-Step Guide To Creating An Airbnb-style App

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating a home-rental booking app that works like Airbnb. This could be beneficial for startups looking to break into this lucrative market!

How to make an Airbnb-like app

1. Examine the requirement, target audience, and competitors

The first step in creating an app similar to Airbnb is to stay focused on your goals while writing down your goals.

Make a list of the most crucial characteristics. Even if you’re making an app that’s similar to Airbnb, remember to include unique features if you want to succeed.

The next step is to conduct a thorough analysis of the target audience for these apps. Concentrate on the type of customer you want to attract.

It’s also crucial to evaluate the market leaders. Get a sense of the types of competitions you’ll be up against, the benefits of their apps, and how to beat them!

2. Think about the stages of app development.

The process of creating an app is usually divided into four stages. Ideation, design, development, and deployment are the four stages. The length of these stages will be determined by the size of the team and the project’s complexity. It also depends on the number of developers on the project.

Stage 1: Ideation

The goal of this stage is to generate ideas for the Airbnb-clone app. It necessitates extensive research and market analysis. You’d like to learn about Airbnb’s customer pain points so you can address them in your app.

Stage of creation:

Wireframing your clone app for the various screens it will be used on is part of this phase. Designers can make mockups to try out different layouts and come up with ways to integrate all of the app’s content for easy navigation.

Development

During this phase, the developers shape your prototypes in order to build the actual app. We consider all working prototypes, app functionality, sketches, storyboards, and workflow charts. Both frontend and backend development are usually included. The frontend should be linked to the backend procedures so that data is collected, saved, and processed in a seamless manner.

This is where your clone of Airbnb goes live! You can either sell the app in a store or give it to a business owner to use in their establishment (in the case of a web application).

3. Designing & Wireframing

It’s critical to sketch out the app you’re creating, as well as its features. The best way to do this is to create an app wireframe. The wireframe serves as the app’s blueprint and guides developers through the development process. These are grids that depict the screens that will appear in the app as well as the information they will contain.

You want to add features to an Airbnb clone app that it doesn’t have! Customers, for example, frequently face issues when guests cancel their reservations on their own. In such a case, you can include a feature in your app that automatically books a nearby stay!

App reviews for Airbnb

Another example, as mentioned by a user named Rachit, is how you can improve the Airbnb app. Users frequently forget passwords, and Airbnb goes above and beyond by matching exact information. While the goal is to ensure security, it does not impress users if they can’t easily log in if they forget their password! You could try to create a more user-friendly mechanism for a password reset!

As one user points out, the application’s sorting option for stays is missing. You must ensure that such a user-favorite option is included in the home screen when creating wireframes and designing.

The moral of the story is that in order to dethrone the first-mover in any industry, you must first understand the customer’s pain points and then create a better app. You can lay a solid foundation for your home-rental app in the wireframing and designing stage just by going through the feedback.

It’s time to start designing the wireframes once you’ve completed them. Designers can make a mockup by using color, images, or icons to show how each screen in the app would look.

If you’re wondering why you should design the app’s UI before coding, one of the main reasons is that it allows you to meet your graphics and visuals objectives. Backend development team software developers should simply follow the visual guide’s lead in writing codes to make the various visual qualities usable. As a result, it helps to cut down on development time and costs.

4. Decide on a platform for source code development.

The ability of a cross-platform product to attract a large user base is a myth. It’s a fact that when developing a new software like Airbnb, choosing one of the platforms between Android and iOS is the safest option. Choosing a single platform for your app from the start will result in a more user-friendly device environment. After you’ve analyzed the market and target audience response to your product, you can build for other mobile app platforms, depending on the user experience.

Android has the largest market share in terms of data for Android apps for various OS versions, accounting for nearly 80% of all users. As a result, setting high goals is a good idea. The remaining 20% of iOS users are mostly wealthy people who use a lot of power. This suggests that putting the app on iOS could lead to more short-term trip sales.

5. Create a back-end development environment

It makes it easier for the developer to change the backend functionality.

Back-end development is a difficult task that necessitates a great deal of expertise and experience. It is, however, easier to get an idea of what your final product will look like with the help of some automation tools.

Using a framework is one way to automate the process. Some of these frameworks are created by backend experts, while others are created by front-end experts who are also familiar with server-side programming languages.

6. Experimenting With The Prototype

The testing team will be able to join the phase once your development team has completed the travel app. The quality assurance analyst team examines your developed Airbnb-like service to ensure that it is operational. If any flaws are found, they must be fixed and retested to ensure that users have a positive experience and that the system is viable. After debugging, the mobile application is ready to be released to users.

7. Make The Minimum Viable Product Available (MVP)

As previously stated, the process of developing an app should ideally be divided into the following steps: identify the need, conduct research, design, develop, and release. These steps can be used to create a complex app or just an MVP.

A minimum viable product (MVP) is essentially a prototype that allows you to get feedback on what changes you should make to your product. It is used by a wide range of businesses for a wide range of apps. The best part is that because it doesn’t do everything an app should do, it doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated to create. More information on MVP development stages can be found here.

8. Create CRM, CMS, and API Integrations

The tipping point for CRM and CMS automation has arrived. For years, automation has been a minor component of CRM and CMS, but it now has the potential to be the entire engine.

Customers expect quick responses from customer service representatives, so automating as much as possible is critical.

API integrations are a great way to automate various processes in your business, such as sending leads directly into Salesforce from a form submission on your website or sending leads directly into HubSpot or Mailchimp from your Google Ads account, rather than having those leads go through long human-based processes before reaching their final destination.

Select a CRM system that best meets your requirements, and then integrates it with your website.

9. Product and marketing improvements

Marketing The End-Result

After the app is released, the first thing that needs to be done is marketing. It all comes down to making a better offer to your target audience than your competitors.