Cost and Features Involved In Developing an App like Airbnb

Airbnb is more than an amazing business website that lets any entrepreneur pull his or her interests towards building up a similar kind of platform with new tiers of their own. As Airbnb is now spreading its legs across the hospitality industry and offering a variety of experience, the bandwagon is quickly setting a new metaphor for an entrepreneurial mindset.

Every tom, dick and harry has a pick to tap same concept within their own geographical boundaries. To serve your curious senses, seeking to get down to every nitty-gritty of this swelling app, here is a condensed blog for you that will cover the following highlights in a brief:

• Business Model of Airbnb
• Features to include in Guest, host and Admin app panel
• Technology Stack used in the app
• Cost to develop those features

Let’s delve in the points:

The Business Model of Airbnb

1. Key Partners

• Hosts (People who rent their space)
• Guests (People who book spaces)
• Freelance Photographers
• Investors and Payment Processors

2. Key Activities

• Building host network and managing hosts
• Building travelers network and managing guests
• Product development, management and maintenance

3. Customer Segments

Guests

• People going for vacation and bleisure (business leisure)
• Travelers who want to stay comfortably at economical prices

Hosts

• People who own a house or property and want to lease/rent them.
• People who want to know and meet new people.

4. Revenue Streams

• Commission from hosts upon every booking
• Commission from guests upon every booking

5. Cost Structure

• Technology set up and running costs
• Payments to photographers
• Employee salary

List of Features Included in an App like Airbnb

Guests App

• Log-in / Sign-up via email or social channels like Facebook.
• Manage user’s settings like change email/password, notification settings, etc.
• Edit and update personal profile information.
• Chat and push notifications.
• Manage personal profile information like birth date, email id, mobile number, residence address and other details.
• Filter and search accommodation on factors like Dates, room type, price range etc.
• View details about different variants of the room like location, direction, terms and condition, ratings and reviews, etc.
• Contact host, send order requests and communicate about these requests via messages.
• Accept/decline offers, create new requests and send to other hosts.
• View upcoming/past bookings and check reservations details.
• View the location of the property through maps.
• Rate and review hosts.
• Select payment methods and view transactions history.
• Access receipts and payout details for completed reservations.
• Invite friends to join the app.

Hosts App

• Create a page and become a listed host.
• Log-in / Sign-up via email or social channels like Facebook.
• Manage Personal page and profile information.
• Manage listings like property details, pictures, set prices, schedules.
• View upcoming property bookings for hosts through a calendar view.
• Manage multiple listings- add multiple hosts through the single listing (new).
• Messaging feature, accept/decline user request.
• Create and send new requests to guests.
• Rate and review guests.
• Add account details, track payments and check transaction history.
• Check reports on booking history, inventory and sales revenue.

Admin Panel

• Admin dashboard to view all the users, hosts, photographers in a single view.
• Manage new listing requests, edit, add or delete listings.
• View booking history, current status, reservations and manage (edit, update, delete) them manually.
• Manage hosts and guests, users’ feedback, complaints, etc.
• Check reports and analytics to drive key decisions, get deep insights so as to catalyze the next action.

Technology Stack Required for Building an Application like Airbnb

• Programming languages : Ruby, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3
• Application Framework : Ruby on Rails
• JavaScript Framework : React.js
• Automation Frameworks : RSpec, Capybara, PhantomJS
• SQL data storage : PostgreSQL
• Global Payment : Braintree
• Messaging & Communication : Twilio
• Cloud Storage : Amazon S3, EBS
• Cloud Hosting : Amazon EC2
• Voice and SMS API for SMS, Voice and Phone Verification : Nexmo

Other Important Technologies:

• Urban Airship : Mobile Push Messaging improve customer engagement with push notifications, location- based marketing and analytics.
• Aerosolve : A machine learning package built for humans.
• Sendgrid : Delivering your transactional and marketing email through one reliable platform.
• Hadoop : Big Database- Open-Source Framework that allows to store and process big data a distributed environment across clusters of computers using simple programming models.
• Web Server : NGINX that accelerates content and application delivery, improves security, and facilitates availability and scalability for the busiest web sites on the Internet.

Cost To Develop an App like Airbnb

The cost to develop an app like Airbnb generally depends on the number of features you require and total hours employed in developing those features. Here is a segregation of basic features that are must to be included in this app and the time taken to develop each one of them and an average cost involved, which generally depends upon the per hour cost of the mobile app development company charges.

The Total Cost to develop an app like Airbnb costs around $31000 – $34000. Given, the app development charges $30/hour.