How to Build a Website Like Airbnb – Complete Guide

Thanks to Airbnb, renting an apartment has become a popular trend among travellers around the world. Airbnb has been a huge success, growing from a one-page website into a globally recognized $113 billion company.

But what makes it unique, successful, and revolutionary? What is the business model that Airbnb implements to generate profits effectively? What is the approach?In this article, we will explain how this accommodation rental website differs from other websites and detail how to create a website like Airbnb.

History of Airbnb

The story of Airbnb began in 2007 when attendees of a design conference faced a shortage of hotel rooms in San Francisco. Two roommates, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, came up with the idea of ​​generating extra income by providing inflatable mattresses to participants. This idea led to the creation of a simple website where three people can live in an apartment in Cesky and Gebbia. Within a year, another person, Nathan Blecharczyk, joined the team and began the process of developing a more feature-rich solution.

Airbnb has an amazing story, from selling breakfast cereal to being rejected by a well-known venture capital firm. It took years of learning and iteration to achieve the results that Airbnb has achieved in today’s market. Today, its value is measured in billions.

Today, launching a website like Airbnb is easier than it was in 2007, thanks to the many e-commerce tools available. But the core of Airbnb remains the same. This is the inspiration for improvements, developing additional features, and implementing a successful monetization strategy.

What You Need to Know about the Airbnb Marketplace

Airbnb is a peer-to-peer marketplace for renting real estate by location.

• Users rely on location as their primary search filter for advertising.
• Peer-to-peer definition refers to the decentralized structure of a market. There are no third-party service providers. Any user can buy and sell freely.
• The platform receives a commission for purchases made through the Platform.

The rental market is different from the buying market. Renting itself is a transitional state between purchase and service. Although it does not require effort on the part of the seller (which is why it is a passive income approach), the level of responsibility is higher than Amazon or eBay. Sellers are expected to guide buyers through the process and provide step-by-step assistance.

From a market development perspective, this hybrid nature presents challenges. Airbnb allows buyers and sellers to interact regularly, participate in community discussions, provide detailed reviews, and consult with other users. The selection process is more complicated than that of Amazon.

However, there is good news. Airbnb has been established, so regular users trust the rental platform. Business owners can ride the wave of hype generated by Airbnb and use it to help the platform emerge. The initial process was even harder for the team behind the original sale. Users are quite hesitant about staying in a stranger’s apartment or letting someone else stay in their home.

Airbnb’s Main Competitor

Airbnb has been in the market for a long time and not only has a good reputation but also strong competition. Each of Airbnb’s main competitors has its strengths and weaknesses, but it is worth studying the most important ones to see how Airbnb survives in the market.

How to Create a Website like Airbnb in 08 Steps

From validating your idea in the marketplace to launching your MVP, creating a marketplace is a process.

Test Your Idea: Inspired by Airbnb

A good market idea solves real problems for both user groups: supply and demand.

Airbnb has been doing this since its inception. The first customer needed a place to stay but could not find one. The first supplier (the founder himself) has extra space and needs extra revenue.

How can you make sure you’re solving a real problem like Airbnb?

Solving user problems better than existing solutions.

You can do this before you invest time or money in creating an actual sales website. Start validating your idea in the marketplace by identifying your target audience, the problem you’re thinking about, and how your concept will improve the current situation. Next, check all of these assumptions by talking to members of your target audience. Remember to do this with suppliers and customers.

As you research your target market, you may find other markets that are already active in that area. Don’t be discouraged by that. If you solve a problem better than other solutions, you have a chance. Therefore, knowing how your competitors are doing this can provide you with valuable insight into how the market can bring about improvements.

Especially for location-based businesses, the best strategy is to find a radical approach. Concentrate your market on one area (i.e. city) and one sector (i.e. product category) and devote your resources to conquering it. In time, you can start scaling your site by location.

In addition to solving supplier and customer problems, you also need a sustainable business model. Can you generate revenue to run and grow your market?

So, after validating your idea in the market, the next step is to find the right business model for your market.

Choosing a Business Model: How Airbnb Makes Money

There are 06 business models you can use to generate revenue on the platform.

• Commission: Charge a fixed fee or percentage per transaction.
• Membership: We charge a subscription fee to join the Platform.
• Listing fee: service providers charge a fee when they publish a post.
• Lead costs: Charging suppliers for access to customers.
• Freemium: You can charge for additional features, but the basic features are free.
• Featured listings/ads: Charging equipment vendors or other companies for exposure.
• Or combine them: Depending on your business, two or more models can work together.

When validating your business idea, think about how you can monetize your platform. Imagine a business model that gives you the most reliable income and allows you to grow your business. Try to find out if potential users like your business model and price plan.

The commission is the most popular business model in the market. That’s how Airbnb makes money. Both hosts and guests are charged a fee called a service fee. Platforms like Amazon, Etsy, Upwork, and Fiverr also use commissions as their primary source of income.

In the early stages, exchanges typically charge only supply-side fees. This helps keep the barrier to entry low. Customers don’t have to pay extra to do business on the platform, and providers only pay when they’re profitable.

Customer charging works if the platform provides enough value to the customer to justify it. This is the case of Airbnb. For example, Airbnb selects the best vacation rentals for guests and offers a review system that allows you to access several short-term rentals on one platform. Providing good value also helps prevent platform leaks or people bypassing the payment system to make transactions.

One of the disadvantages of commission models is that they can be difficult to incorporate into products. Typically, a dedicated marketplace payment solution should support shared payments between providers and marketplaces.

Below, we take a closer look at payments and other features on sites like Airbnb.

Decide What Features You Need: Airbnb’s Core features

Airbnb’s features are very different from those offered by traditional online stores and marketplaces. The rental market seems to need at least some of these features from the start.

Today, Airbnb has a variety of features that have been developed over the past decade. It is important to note that Airbnb did not introduce all of these features in 2008. Instead, we iterated and improved the features based on user feedback.

When deciding which features the market needs, focus first on core functionality. What are the key things you should have from day one, and what else can you develop when your idea is validated in the market and you have revenue or capital to finance further development?

Here is a list of the best features of Airbnb:

Profiles and listings

Airbnb has many customers and suppliers that interact and do business with each other.

To advertise or rent an apartment for rent, you must:

• Create an account
• Creating and updating the list (rental properties)
• Publish and update your user profile

Well-designed and informative pages and ads can help increase market conversion rates and increase user trust.

Map and Location Search

In traditional e-commerce marketplaces like eBay, location doesn’t matter because the items sold can be shipped worldwide. Location-based marketplaces like Airbnb require guests and hosts to find each other for a successful transaction. Or at least the guest must be physically present at the property rented by the host.

This means that location-based marketplaces cannot function without a powerful location-based search engine that allows users to find Ads in their ideal location. Displaying ads on the map is also important.

The payment feature allows you to charge a fee for each transaction.

Online Payments

Advertising sites like Craigslist connect customers with local suppliers, but they cannot facilitate payments between the two. Peer-to-peer rental marketplaces like Airbnb allow customers to book and pay through the site.

The powerful push function makes using the platform easy and convenient. Simple online payments are safer than cash or direct payments. All these elements are important to build a successful business in the market. In addition, the availability of on-site payments allows market operators to charge a fee for each transaction.

Availability and Booking Management

When a marketplace offers services or rentals, providers need a reliable system to determine when listings are available. Customers should only be able to search and list books that are available during the requested date. When you reserve a listing, it should be automatically determined to be unavailable at that time.

This feature is a key part of the value proposition of rental markets like Airbnb. We help suppliers get more from their hires, close deals and avoid frustrating double bookings.

Two-sided Reviews

Peer-to-peer markets depend on the trust of strangers. Online stores and platforms like Amazon often ask customers to leave reviews for sellers, but marketplaces like Airbnb also require sellers to make sure their customers can trust them.

Therefore, the function of dual review is important. After the transaction, the customer reviews the supplier, and the supplier reviews the customer. Public reviews increase trust, and good reviews also increase sales.

Delaying Payments or Holding funds

Many companies, like Airbnb, add a layer of trust with a feature called deferred payment. In case of late payment, the customer will pay directly at the time of order. However, the service provider will receive the money only after the reservation is completed.

Deferring payments is an effective way to ensure that market providers and customers are providing with honest intentions.

All these important features and more are included in the Miracuves Marketplace solution.

Admin Tools

Success in the market requires daily monitoring and management. Market administrators must be able to send notifications to users, manage user-created content such as profiles and listings, control user access, view transaction processes, etc.

Choose How to Create Your Platform – Marketplace Software

When Airbnb first launched, the online market was new. Much has changed since Airbnb’s inception, but programming a similar peer-to-peer rental marketplace can be a complex, expensive, and time-consuming task.

Entrepreneurs in today’s market have alternatives that do not require development skills or a large budget.

For a more detailed analysis, check out our article on 6 different ways to develop a market website. Here, we’ll look at the three most common ways to build a marketplace website: coding from scratch, using a no-code marketplace builder, and using API-free marketplace solution.

Create a Rental Market From Scratch

Custom development gives you a lot of freedom to create and design your own marketplace. However, the market is more complex than the average web application. The custom development process is time-consuming and has a high initial cost.

If you’re not a technical founder, you’ll need a five-figure budget to hire developers and build a business from scratch. Construction costs vary by agency, but even the most effective option can cost $50,000 to launch a site. This amount does not include the cost of third-party equipment, maintenance, upgrades, hosting, or monitoring. This fee must still be paid monthly.

A custom build gives you more freedom, but the price is higher.

If you are a software development professional, the option of writing code from scratch is easier. If you can afford to build the front end and back end yourself and are willing to take on maintenance, your costs will be limited to hosting and third-party tools. Compare Airbnb’s tech stack or start with tech you’re familiar with. You can use any programming language you know (Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, Python, Java, Clojure, etc.).

If you are interested in exploring this option further, we recommend this article about Market apps written by our Senior Software Developer. Here’s a step-by-step guide to building a marketplace app from scratch, helping you assess the scope of your project, choose a technology stack, and prioritize features and functionality.

However, even if the development work actually costs you nothing, your time as the founder of the market is valuable. Creating a niche market takes months of hard work. In the early stages, this time, it might be better to develop some different core features and build a user base rather than coding the basic functionality that is already present in most markets.

Build a Marketplace Fast With No-Code Software

If you have a business idea similar to Airbnb, the fastest way to go to market is through a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) sales tool.

The SaaS marketplace is also the easiest option for non-technical founders. If your software provides the basic functionality of a marketplace website, you can build a website like Airbnb in days instead of months. You don’t have to worry about hosting, maintenance, backups, or updates, and you can run and manage your entire marketplace without programming.

Use the best SaaS marketing tools if you are not a developer. Even if you are a developer, this method allows you to prove your idea and find the right product-market without spending months building a website.

Creating your own marketplace using off-the-shelf tools doesn’t give you the same freedom as custom development. There may be some special features for your marketing idea that are not supported by no-code software.

However, SaaS tools are perfect for validating market ideas and creating minimal platforms. This allows you to quickly launch your site and get to know your audience. A good way to bridge the gap is to support code-free software through manual interaction. In time, you can switch to more specialized solutions to grow your business and automate all your tasks.

For the next stage, an API-based marketplace software solution is a good option. Miracuves also allows you to extend your SaaS builder market infinitely with custom code, providing an easy transition from no code to code.

Custom-Develop on Top Marketplace APIs

Our API-based headless marketplace software aims to combine the benefits of custom development with codeless marketplace tools. Miracuves is a leader in this category and is specifically designed to power rental marketplace websites like Airbnb.

First of all, Miracuves provides all the basic functionality of the market out of the box. You don’t have to spend time developing important market features that your users give you, and you get a complete market without code and running when needed. This reduces time-to-market and costs by up to 90% compared to market-from-scratch programs.

At the same time, special coding freedom is maintained. Miracuves API-driven architecture allows you to develop your own features and third-party integrations on the market. You are also free to design and create your own user interface.

The third big advantage of Miracuves is that they take care of your maintenance, security compliance, updates, and more. Even if your sales become a global business, you don’t need to spend development time on important maintenance tasks. Instead, you can use this budget to create cool and unique features and take advantage of regular updates provided by Miracuves.

API-based marketplace solutions can reduce build costs and time to market by 90%.

Miracuves gives you the benefits of a code-free hosted tool and the freedom and flexibility of custom coding. Miracuves allows you to create your first version of a marketplace like Airbnb without coding. Once your idea is validated and you generate revenue, you can take your business to the next level by customizing your own Miracuves marketplace and creating your own front-end applications. A great way for non-technical founders to get started is to hire one of Miracuves market vetted custom development experts. We have developers who are familiar with the market and Miracuves.

Apart from these three methods, there are other ways to create a website that looks like Airbnb. For example, you can use a general-purpose website builder and plugins or integrate a set of tools without using code. While none of these tools can match the speed of the no-code custom software market or offer the same flexibility as custom development, they can be customized to fit your specific situation. If you’re looking for the right method for you, check out our article on how to choose the right market software.

Start With Your MVP: Learn, Improve, Iterate

As the example shown by Airbnb, running a successful business in the market requires continuous learning and development. The sure way to success is to focus on a clear audience and meet their needs better than anyone else.

You will only find out if your idea really comes to fruition when you run your site.

The first version you release should be a minimum viable platform (MVP). “Minimum Viable Platform” is the market version of the classic startup term “minimum viable product.” It is a mini version of the platform that solves the problems that matter to your users the most, unlike any other solution.

Don’t confuse minimal with average or basic. The MVP approach allows you to find the fastest and easiest way to deliver an amazing experience to your first customers. A minimum viable product must communicate a unique value proposition, allow users to interact, and allow you to test your business model.

Airbnb is known for its great design. After all, both founders are designers and were the first guests present at the design conference.

Trust is at the core of Airbnb’s design principles. Many of the key features mentioned above, such as the secure review and payment system, are designed to help people feel safe when interacting with strangers online. Building trust is something you can do with your MVP. After release, we will continue to improve and iterate based on your feedback. Airbnb has gone through many versions, each one improving on the previous one. This is a great technique that allows you to discover what your users want.

Brian Chesky shares Airbnb’s evolution over the years on Twitter.

The easiest way to launch the first version of your marketplace and start learning from your users is to use a no-code software tool like Miracuves to create a fully functional marketplace MVP. Depending on your imagination, you can even take your simple website further and connect your customers and suppliers manually. Whatever solution allows you to improve speed while providing a great customer experience, this is the solution you should choose.

How Much Does It Cost to Create a Website Like Airbnb?

To make sure you’re ready to develop and launch your platform, we’ve provided cost estimates for peer-to-peer marketplaces like Airbnb.

Please note that the final price of this platform depends on the following factors:

•  What features would you like your rental marketplace platform to have?
•  Selected mode of development.
• Location and thus the price of the development company.

Considering all the above features, the average cost of a home rental website is:

The cost of developing an website with Miracuves depends on several factors, as mentioned above. Here’s a breakdown of the potential costs:

Note: It is important to note that these cost estimates are approximate and may vary depending on your specific needs, complexity, and the location of your development team. In addition, this estimate does not include costs such as application marketing or server hosting, so these should also be taken into account.

That said, we must say that the final price may vary, and only our software development partners can provide you with an accurate quote.

However, if you want to know the cost of creating a good vacation rental website and development company in Mumbai, you can rely on the numbers mentioned above.

The Key Point to Creating a Successful Site Like Airbnb

• Start by creating an MVP. By incorporating only the simple feature sets needed to meet end-user needs, you can create a working solution in just a few months. In addition, you can test the product in real life, collect user feedback and find out how the online hosting market is developing. In addition, the MVP is a proof of concept proposed to investors to raise capital.
• Focus on customer loyalty. It is important to constantly improve websites like Airbnb to ensure a smooth user experience. With this goal in mind, you should listen to user feedback, review designs, follow trends, and add new features.
• Take advantage of every opportunity to reach your audience. To attract as many customers as possible, you need to reach them on all devices. For this purpose, we will create a simple website like Airbnb, implement new features and finally launch a mobile application.

You should also consider developing a progressive web application (PWA) instead of a mobile solution to allow users to install your website on their smartphones. It is fast and easy compared to mobile market app development, saving time and money.

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Why Choose Miracuves to Build a Website Like Airbnb?

Founded in 2022, Miracuves helps startups and small businesses solve business challenges and add value to their customers. Headquartered in Mumbai, Miracuves is a trusted company that provides online marketplace development services and creates software solutions that suit the needs and preferences of end users.

With the goal of providing a seamless user experience, our engineers apply advanced technologies and best practices to ensure scalability, high availability, fault tolerance, and security. Additionally, we can automate testing and deployment, reducing feature release time.

To help you succeed and generate revenue, our software experts can help you conduct competitive analysis, prioritize features, and define your roadmap for implementation. Our developers also select technology packages that perfectly meet your project requirements.

We have built dozens of websites and marketplace applications. For example, our team recently created a vacation rental marketplace for long-term or short-term accommodation rentals in Dubai. Here, you can see some of our reviewed cases.

If you want to create a website like Airbnb, please send us a message. We will contact you within 1 business day to help with any issues. Consultation about your project is free.

Final Thought

There are specific needs and challenges to overcome when developing a rental market. For example, the platform must be able to manage financial transactions securely, integrate with different payment systems, and be robust and flexible enough to support a variety of rental goods and services.

The experienced development team already has a deep understanding of these requirements based on previous work. This means you can use your knowledge to develop these skills more effectively and avoid common mistakes. You will also understand how to make your platform scalable, so it grows as your business grows.

Its time to build your own alternative to airbnb like vacation rental market. A complete platform offers holiday homes, private homes and more.

Just like most vacation rental booking platforms or rental sites offering wide range of homes and villas.

At Miracuves, we combine years of experience and expertise to make your market vision a reality.

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