In this article, we strive to discuss how to make an app like Airbnb and how much does it cost to develop an app like Airbnb.
Airbnb is a safe, proven online platform on which one can lease, look up and book properties across the world. The company offers property owners a convenient automated service that helps decide the appointment of the rental cost.
People prefer to book the private accommodations in large part because they have the desire to feel like a local. Airbnb recognizes this desire and offers to rent a real tree house or bungalow on a tropical island, and sometimes the entire island itself.
But what kind of price one should set for strangers lodging in their house? And how much one should be ready to pay to stay in some other person’s house? It is not always possible to respond to such questions immediately. At some point, Airbnb was faced with the fact that forcing property owners and tenants to solve these problems on their own, they thereby reduced the number of active users.
As a result, the company concluded that it is necessary to offer proprietors a convenient automated service that helps decide the rental cost, and service has evolved into what we have now. Today’s Airbnb itself will tell the user the best price based on the property location, the presence of all sorts of facilities, time of the year and thousands of other factors that we ourselves can not even notice or unfairly consider insignificant.
Whether it is a room for the night, the cottage for a week or a castle for the summer, Airbnb provides a first-class service and guarantees the security of the transaction at any price, in more than 57000 cities and 192 countries.
Add to this:
• Global support;
• Rapidly growing community;
• Huge variety of propositions.
Hundreds of Airbnb round-the-clock support hotline operators are at all times ready to answer users’ questions and help them with any booking problems.
The service has all the possible accommodation options to suit people with different needs and financial resources. Here one can rent a place in a hostel for $5 a day, as well as the count’s estate for $5000.
Service development
Airbnb began its work in August 2008 in San Francisco and was established spontaneously, when three boys had an idea to lease somebody one of the rooms of their rented accommodation where they put three inflatable mattresses, for the duration of the conference. By creating a makeshift website, called Air Bed and Breakfast, they were able to earn and spend time with their tenants.
At that time, the service was specialized at renting berths. However, in 2009, when the company received their first investment in the amount of $7.2 million, Sequoia Capital Fund advised them to expand the concept. However, to this day, 90% of the proposals consist of homes and apartments where the owners usually reside.
How does the service work?
Algorithms for the price determination and offering are used by many online services. For example, eBay comprises a list of similar goods sold and, based on the average, forms a proposed price. But, for eBay, it does not matter, where buyers and sellers are located geographically, as well as when the goods would be sold or bought. For Uber and Lyft services, on the other hand, location and time are important. However, prices are set forcibly in these companies, and there is no need for transparency in pricing.
Read also: How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Taxi app Like Uber?
Today, with the help of mobile application for Android / iOS (iPhone) and the built from the ground up unique expert system, called Aerosolve, Airbnb has achieved maximum accuracy in calculating the estimated value, and pricing recommendations service maintains daily a lot of homeowners who place their offerings within the portal.
Nevertheless, the company believes that the service is much more capable than that. Therefore, Aerosolve platform was publicly released under the Open Source license. With it, many developers might start working with the machine learning systems much more easily.
What is the cost of the project, what is its strategy?
According to DMR’s estimations, Airbnb hosts more than 2 million proposals from more than 57 thousand cities in 192 countries over the globe. The company’s market capitalization has exceeded the mark of $25 billion, which makes it one of the most successful world startups. The high growth rate makes it one of the most promising and attractive for investors.
As for the business model - it is quite simple:
• Each proprietor pays 3%;
• Every tenant - from 6% to 12%;
• Local photographers, affiliated with a company, can make free professional shots of the offered property, ensuring reliability.
It is really a favorable situation for everyone, because the service deducts its share only when the payment is obtained by homeowners, and they, in turn, are paid only when renters are satisfied. This is a clear example of the win-win strategy: those who think of others first, profit.
According to internal statistics, two-thirds of members of the community have begun to use the service through the recommendations of others. This means that the increase in the number of offers and requests for reservations is growing organically.
The main driving force of similar startups is the economy of the future, share economy, where people give preference to services provided by other people, as opposed to companies. And it’s not just a fad, but a stable trend that is just beginning to gain its momentum.
How much can it cost to create an application similar to Airbnb?
How much does an app like Airbnb cost? Being a company with more than 4 years of extensive experience in outsource software development industry, we attribute the basic app like Airbnb cost to the medium level of difficulty. Such app’s development would consist of around 170 hours of UI/UX and approx. 1000 hours of coding, project management and testing. Taking into account these timeframes and hourly rate of $45, an average cost to create an app similar to Airbnb would range between $45000 - $55000.
Real estate app
An exemplary of such app can serve one of our cases – Real Estate App. A kind of localized Airbnb clone, actually. It provides a platform which helps property owners, real estate agents and customers cooperate smoothly and swiftly. Easy and useful navigation helps looking up housings with required parameters and contact the renter directly.
Read also: Does a Real Estate Agency Need a Mobile App?
How to create a similar service?
Perhaps many are wondering - if a mastodon like Airbnb operates in the market already, whether it makes sense to enter it and to build an Airbnb mobile app?
And the answer is – it certainly does. According to AirDNA’s data, a quarter of all bookings of the Airbnb is held inside the United States, which means that the niches in other countries are still free. Among other things, the service is very popular in large cities, bypassing the smaller ones, and local startups have a good chance of success.
Of course, at the present level of users’ fastidiousness, it would be hard to gain followers using the website created overnight and turn it into a megacorp. It would simply be lost among the other, professional portals.
So, it is much more sensible to employ the services of an IT company that will design and develop a custom application exactly to the client’s needs and ideas. First impressions play a large role, and providing convenient quality service from the start, the startup gets a huge bonus when promoting.
Remember, the Airbnb’s rapid take-off secret is simple: if service helps people to save money and solve their problems - success becomes a matter of time and Airbnb app development cost will be covered quickly.
Read also:
• How To Develop an App Like Periscope?
• How Much Does it Cost to Build an App Like Snapchat?
