Hi All,
is it possible to build a wix website where users can offer and/or book a service? (ex: blablacar, airbnb). Users should be able to manage their own bookings, receive payments and interact with other users.
Thanks for any advice )
Yes, am working on one right now. But you will have to develop lots of code, you can´t drag-and-drop your way out of iit. Booking management is the most complex. Payments is rather easy. Interacting, I do not understand what you exactly mean by it (email, phone???)
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Hi Giri, thanks for your reply. Hearing that is feasible is good already…
Interacting should be through internal chat/message box. I have been trying to achieve this using mostly the built in stuff (wix forum for users profiles, wix chat, wix booking), with a bit of code and custom collections… but i am at a dead end now (I am not a code expert).
I am really trying to emulate the concept behind platforms such as Airbnb, blablacar, fiverr, but is hard to find website examples based on wix that do something similar to that. Do you now if wix is planning on providing such a new feature (peer to peer marketplace, …) in the future? I think this would help tons of people already trying to integrate these features “manually”, and make the platform really complete! (they already did an amazing job so far i have to say)
I am also wondering if it wouldn’t be more effective to hire an expert to do the job, but i have no idea about the costs to build such a website (mobile included)…?
Thanks again for any answer you can provide
Have no idea if Wix is building such a communication system. About your other question: you will need an expert, it is highly complex. I have done complex stuff for different verticals (insurance premiun calculation, payroll, order processing), but non of them are so complex as accommodation reservations. The reason is, there is no standard: everybody comes up with their own rules and covering 90% of them is already very, very difficult. Getting a property (description, pictures, ameneties, map location) is easy. But then you get things like: in high season (what is that exactly) my villa can only be rented starting on a friday, minimum 4 people, 5 days, for this rate, or that rate if such and such. But in low season, it can be rented by the room, any day, minimum 2 days, but prepaid.
It is very expensive to build and you need a good knowledge of Wix Code and its limitations (e.g. how are you going to present a grid (spreadsheet-like) with rservations in colors if Wix doesn´t offer such a thing AND does not allow front-end modules to be integrated?
I started on it after having evaluated 7 or 8 standard reservation systems. None of them could do what I desperately needed (a very specific problem). It will take, on my own, at least a year to get something working, including OTA-integration and payment processing (not that hard now).
If I were you, I would seriously re-think the whole thing, it´s gonna cost you a bundle (hundred of thousands at least) and you need to find a developer who has done this before, otherwise he is going to make every mistake in the book (like fouding reservations on dates occupied instead of on a stock-based availability system).
So, it is possible, but if I were you, I would hand off the reservation part to an existing supplier and integrate with that. Tip: look at Booking Automation. I came very far with that, just not far enough. But they offer an API for reservations, they have all payment processors you need and even do automations (with Integromat).
Hi Giri, thanks, I see…
on my side actually I would not need to have such a level of complexity. I mentioned Airbnb model because is clear to anybody what is doing, but in the end I would only need a simple booking system that allows users to offer a service and other users to book it…let me be more specific, i found this https://takelessons.com/ as a good example:
create a community where some users offer lessons and other users filter the lessons they need and book it
needed:
- the community: users can login, build their profile and interact (wix forum allows everything needed + code to make the user profile more specific)
- the services:
“teacher” users to upload a lesson and manage availability and prices
“student” users to see and find the lessons available based on filtering (time, place, subject,…)
(wix database + booking system) - the booking system: everything linked in the booking system that take care of availability, payments, ratings, messages , notifications
The idea is to standardize most variables, as the lesson type, and lesson place (build in dropdowns) so that the users must choose between the choices…
Do you think this can make the website more feasible?
I also had a look to “booking automation”, that is specific for rentals…do you know of a more general booking management system that can be integrated into wix?
Thank you
Have you had a look at Wix Bookings?
Hi Giri,
to my knowledge, unfortunately wix booking does not allow users to directly manage their availability and services (marketplace concept)…this is why i am looking for a solution, but it looks more complicated than previously thought.
Would be interesting to hear the opinion of other wix users or developers, i am sure someone had the same issue before.
Thanks for your help.