An Airbnb co-host with twenty apartments in Rio de Janeiro
Short-term rentals · Rio de Janeiro
Twenty apartments in Rio, a reputation built on Airbnb and a phone that never stops. The proposal puts her own brand on top of the system she already pays for: Stays decides what's free and what it costs, and the website shows it in three languages and takes the payment.
What was the problem?
“You close the booking yourself on WhatsApp, and Airbnb still keeps 16%.”
A Superhost since 2024, with twenty listings in Rio and Niterói (Urca, Copacabana, Leme, Ipanema, Jardim Botânico, Tijuca, Niterói) and ten years in the business. Everything ran through Airbnb and a single WhatsApp number. She had just signed up for Stays to keep calendars and owners in order, but guests still booked the only way there was: by sending a message.
Every single time
What kept breaking
“Booking is 100% manual: I ask for dates, people, neighborhood and send links.”
What was decided?
She had just signed up for Stays, a system that already handles calendars, prices, payments and the link with Airbnb and Booking. So the website keeps nothing of its own: it asks Stays what's free, creates the booking there, and Stays tells the other channels. The risk of selling the same night twice stays with the company she already pays for that. What I build is what Stays doesn't have: the brand, the page for apartment owners and what gets told about each neighborhood.
What I ruled out, and why
She already has one in Stays, paid for and with support. Building it again meant charging her for something she already pays for.
What was built?
01
The guest compares neighborhood and price without opening a single apartment. Today that takes 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 shows where it is, how guests rated it and what a night costs.
02
The calendar shows what Stays says. If a night was already sold on Airbnb, it shows as taken here.
December 12 to 18. Booked nights are crossed out, not hidden.
Airbnb doesn't let you bring your reviews over. The best ones are copied once, with the name of the person who wrote them.
03
The summary shows what each thing costs, and the discount for booking direct gets its own line. It's the real reason not to go back to Airbnb.
− R$ 430 for booking on her own website. Without that line, the guest has no reason to book somewhere else.
Payments go in the client's name. The money never passes through me.
04
Every new apartment is income that comes back every month for the manager. The owner comes in to work out what theirs could earn and leaves their WhatsApp.
Neighborhood, bedrooms and where it's listed today. The estimate appears before asking for any contact details.
The back and forth on WhatsApp to find out if anything is free. The website checks the real calendar and never offers a night that's already sold.
Serving a foreign guest by translating message after message. And Google finds each version.
Looking for a guide every time a guest asks what to do. The tour is requested together with the booking and the host confirms it.
Answering ten times a day where the supermarket is. It doesn't answer the delicate things, like complaints or emergencies: it passes them to her with a summary.
What happens on its own
What changed?
It's a proposal. The clickable design has been online since September 2026 and the client hasn't approved it yet, so there's nothing running to measure and no result to report.
What is still missing
For it to work, Stays has to give access to its system, and that depends on neither the client nor me. The screenshots are from the September 2026 design; the brand name and the client's photo are blurred because there's no permission to show them.
This case is also written in Spanish. Leer el caso en español →
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