An Airbnb co-host with twenty apartments in Rio de Janeiro
Holiday rentals · Rio de Janeiro
Twenty apartments in Rio, a reputation built on Airbnb and a phone that never stops. The proposal puts a brand of her own on top of the system the client already pays for: Stays decides availability and price, the site shows them in three languages and takes the payment.
What was the problem?
“You close the booking yourself on WhatsApp, and Airbnb still keeps 16%.”
Superhost since 2024, with twenty listings in Rio and Niterói —Urca, Copacabana, Leme, Ipanema, Jardim Botânico, Tijuca, Niterói— and ten years in the business. The whole operation ran through Airbnb and a single WhatsApp number. She had just signed up for Stays to get calendars and owners in order, but guests still booked the only way there was: by writing.
Every single time
What kept breaking
“Booking is 100% manual: I ask for dates, people, neighbourhood and send links.”
What was decided?
The client had just signed up for Stays, which already handles calendars, prices, sync with Airbnb and Booking, payments and an owner portal, and has an open API. So the site stores no availability: it asks Stays on every search, creates the booking there and Stays passes it on to the other channels. The risk of selling the same night twice stays with the provider she already pays. What gets built is what Stays doesn't have: the brand, the owners page and the neighbourhood content.
What I ruled out, and why
They already exist in Stays, paid for and supported. Building them again meant charging to rebuild what the client already pays for, and taking on the overbooking risk.
It's a booking engine with a visual layer. It has no page to win owners and no neighbourhood content, which is what ranks on Google. They don't compete: the proposed site uses that same engine inside.
Airbnb doesn't open its API outside its partners. The best ones are transcribed once, with attribution, and reviews from direct bookings are requested from day one.
That's a second complete booking system. First comes a catalogue with requests, to learn which tours people actually ask for.
What was built?
01
The guest compares neighbourhood and rate without opening a single listing. It's what today gets solved by sending links one by one.
R$ 450 a night, right on the map. No pin to open to find out what it costs.
Each apartment says where it is, how it was rated and what a night costs.
02
The photo opens full width and the booking bar never leaves. Amenities and description come from the real listing.
Price per night and a single button, fixed at the bottom while you scroll.
03
The calendar is painted with what Stays says. If a night already sold on Airbnb, it shows as taken here.
12 to 18 December. Booked nights are struck through, not hidden.
Airbnb doesn't hand out its reviews through an API. They're transcribed once, chosen, with attribution.
04
The summary says what each thing costs, and the direct-booking discount gets its own line. It's the concrete reason not to go back to Airbnb.
− R$ 430 for booking on her own site. Without that line, the guest has no reason to switch channels.
The payment gateway is in the client's name. The money never goes through me.
05
The search is on the first screen. Below it the host speaks in the first person: you book with someone, not with a platform.
Where, when and how many: the three questions that get asked on WhatsApp today.
Rating, reviews, properties and favourites, taken from her public Airbnb profiles.
06
Portuguese, Spanish and English, each with its own address, which is what lets Google find every version. Dark mode changes the colours, not the design.
The language and dark-mode switches belong to the site, not to the prototype.
07
Every new apartment is income that repeats every month for the manager. The owner comes in to work out what theirs would earn and leaves their WhatsApp.
Neighbourhood, bedrooms and where it's listed today. The estimate shows up before asking for any contact details.
08
It answers what repeats —luggage, parking, supermarket— with neighbourhood notes written by the host. When something breaks, it stops answering and hands the case over.
"The shower isn't heating" is not a frequent question: it goes straight to the host.
The WhatsApp back-and-forth to find out whether anything is free. The site asks Stays on every search and never offers a night that's already sold.
Sending Airbnb links one by one so the guest can compare.
Working out by hand what a stay costs.
Airbnb's 16% on bookings the host lands on her own. The direct-booking discount sits on its own visible line in the summary.
Serving a foreign guest by translating message after message. Each language has its own address, and Google finds each version.
An owner having to write to find out whether it's worth it. It works out what their apartment would earn and leaves their WhatsApp.
Looking for a guide every time a guest asks what to do. The tour is requested with the booking and the host confirms it.
Answering ten times a day where the supermarket is. The delicate stuff —complaints, emergencies— it doesn't answer: it hands it to her with a summary.
What happens on its own
What changed?
It's a proposal. The clickable design has been published since September 2026 and the client hasn't approved it yet, so there is no operation to measure and no result to report.
Measured on the system
I measured these on the code and the live site. They can be checked again.
What is still missing
Everything depends on the Stays API credentials, which its support team issues and which depend on neither the client nor me. The screenshots are from the design published in September 2026; the brand name and the client's photo are blurred because there is no permission to show them.
The full case is also written in Spanish. Leer el caso en español →
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