Challenge

Design

From a design standpoint, we needed to showcase the area without going off the rail and creating a duplicate of an area tourism site. Thus we focused on a playful and informative feel. Bulleted by a few key points of interest from the area. We facilitated further exploration by linking inline the official tourism site and other resources to make an enjoyable stay seamless without building the content and function ourselves.

Development

Develop a booking solution and experience that aligned with current audience expectations (i.e make it feel like Airbnb).

Though there are various booking solutions available through plugins, widget or third parties. Either they have poor user experiences or are only cost-effective for high volume businesses such as restaurants, hair salons etc.

Solution

After extensive research and a bit of tinkering with various possible options. It was concluded that the ideal solution was to create a custom React widget that hit google calendars API and used Stripe/Paypal for transactions.