Starting a Marketplace in 2020: Open Your Booking Marketplace Like Booking.com
Last updated on Jun 02, 2020
Why a Booking Marketplace is a Great Business
So, you're about to launch a booking marketplace. You're just in time—a booking marketplace business model has a great forecast for the upcoming years. You can see it by tracking the growth of the popular booking websites such as Booking.com.
For example, the world leader in travel reservations and accommodation booking Booking Holdings has been showing impressive growth in the recent years. The company's revenue grew by 17% and its stock price jumped 19% in 2017. Their focus on online travel booking should help the company keep the strong growth in the near term.
For example, the world leader in travel reservations and accommodation booking Booking Holdings has been showing impressive growth in the recent years. The company's revenue grew by 17% and its stock price jumped 19% in 2017. Their focus on online travel booking should help the company keep the strong growth in the near term.
In 2017, Booking Holdings generated $12.7 billion and is expected to increase their revenue by 20% annually over the next several years.
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Accommodation
According to Vice President of Booking.com Olivier Grémillon, they've been actively building their supply and business in the vacation rental segment for years, growing supply globally by 27 percent over 2017 by recognizing the consumer demand for all types of accommodation. Mr. Grémillon added that the growth will continue.
In 2017, AirBnB made $2.8 billion in revenue with $0.45 billion profit. By 2020, AirBnB's revenue is projected to reach $8.5 billion with $3.5 profit. Incredible, isn't it?
In 2017, AirBnB made $2.8 billion in revenue with $0.45 billion profit. By 2020, AirBnB's revenue is projected to reach $8.5 billion with $3.5 profit. Incredible, isn't it?
It's high time to create a booking marketplace to get your share!
Restaurant Booking
Another promising booking marketplace scenario is restaurant reservation. Let's take a look at the industry leaders—Yelp and OpenTable.
Yelp is one of the biggest online reservation and review platforms. Besides restaurant reservation, it offers other types of booking. In the past two years Yelp's revenue has increased from $200 million in Q1 2017 up to $243 million in Q3 2018. This is almost 25% growth. OpenTable specializes only on restaurant reservations and reviews. By 2019, it's annual revenue has reached $200 million.
Yelp is one of the biggest online reservation and review platforms. Besides restaurant reservation, it offers other types of booking. In the past two years Yelp's revenue has increased from $200 million in Q1 2017 up to $243 million in Q3 2018. This is almost 25% growth. OpenTable specializes only on restaurant reservations and reviews. By 2019, it's annual revenue has reached $200 million.
Why not become a part of the restaurant reservation industry now?
Car Rental
Travellers prefer renting a car for a vacation because it has some strong advantages over public transportation. With a car, a traveller has a freedom of movement, can book a cheaper hotel located a bit further from the city center, and travel in comfort with the family.
The global car rental industry is projected to grow at 14% by 2023. An American car rental holding Avis Budget Group reported a revenue increase of 7% in Q1 2018 and RentalCars' annual revenue has already surpassed whopping $800 million.
The global car rental industry is projected to grow at 14% by 2023. An American car rental holding Avis Budget Group reported a revenue increase of 7% in Q1 2018 and RentalCars' annual revenue has already surpassed whopping $800 million.
So, now it's the right time to start your own car rental marketplace business.
Why CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is a Good Fit for a Booking Marketplace
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor has all the functionality you'll need to start your booking marketplace. But not only functionality matters. Here are 4 reasons why you should open your booking marketplace on CS-Cart Multi-Vendor.
1. Necessary Functions for Booking
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor has over 500 eCommerce functions on board: SEO tools, promotions, reward points and other marketing tools, functions for vendors, reports and analytics, notifications, and more. We'd like to focus here only on the specific functions for a booking marketplace. CS-Cart Multi-Vendor has them all:
Vendor locations
Vendors (car rental companies, restaurants, and so on) can set their locations so that customers could book a room or restaurant in the desired location. The Vendor locations function allows you to display a map with all the vendors in the chosen location, enable vendor filtering by distance from the customer's location, show nearby vendors on the marketplace homepage, and more. The Vendor locations function allows customers to easily find accommodation, car, or restaurant near them or in a desired location.
Booking reservation system
On the CS-Cart add-on marketplace, you can get an add-on that enables an advanced booking system on your marketplace. This flexible tool helps to create and manage appointments / reservations online on your Multi-Vendor marketplace.
Vendor subscription plans
You can create subscription plans for vendors with different conditions and limitations. Apart from commissions, it allows you to take a monthly fee from vendors for listing their services in your marketplace. With subscription plans, commissions are pre-set for each plan, and a new vendor just picks the most suitable option.
Powerful catalog management
Fill the catalog manually or use a flexible mass listing import, configure listings by tweaking over 45 properties, create an unlimited number of listing features, filters, options, and categories. Your vendors can do all this as well.
Call requests
To simplify the booking process for customers, your vendors can get incoming requests. When a customer clicks the call request button on a listing, a new order with the "Awaiting call" status is created for the vendor.
Customer-to-vendor communication
Connect your customers with vendors so that the latter could answer the customer's questions about a car or a room he or she wants to book. With the Customer-to-Vendor Communication function, customers can send a message to vendors right from the listing.
Comments and reviews
Reviews are crucial for any business that cares about its reputation. Customer reviews help vendors get fair credit and earn good image in customers' opinion. Reviews influence vendors' and thus your income directly. Multi-Vendor offers the feedback and review system with an interactive star rating. Customers can comment and rate vendors, listings, categories, and more.
2. Minimum Viable Product
Launching an online marketplace can cost you thousands of dollars. If you're not sure that you will 100% succeed with your marketplace project, you won't be ready to spend that amount of money for sure. We wouldn't.
As our customers say, CS-Cart Multi-Vendor has a perfect price / functionality ratio, which means you can quickly launch a fully functioning eCommerce marketplace without spending a lot of money. Our Multi-Vendor software is a perfect solution to test MVP.
As our customers say, CS-Cart Multi-Vendor has a perfect price / functionality ratio, which means you can quickly launch a fully functioning eCommerce marketplace without spending a lot of money. Our Multi-Vendor software is a perfect solution to test MVP.
3. Scalability
So, you've tested MVP and looks like your marketplace has a great potential (of course it does!). Eventually, it will grow and you will probably need to adopt it to your changing business strategy.
Thanks to open source code and tons of ready-made add-ons, you can scale your Multi-Vendor marketplace vertically, horizontally, or how you need it. CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is very flexible and extremely scalable, which is confirmed by our customers.
Thanks to open source code and tons of ready-made add-ons, you can scale your Multi-Vendor marketplace vertically, horizontally, or how you need it. CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is very flexible and extremely scalable, which is confirmed by our customers.
4. Support
You won't be left behind after you buy CS-Cart Multi-Vendor. Our support team of professionals will always be at your disposal at the launch and after it. You will get 90 days of free technical support and you'll be able to get assistance any time after these initial 90 days. Our support team will help you set up your marketplace, maintain, and upgrade it.
Of course, this is just a small part of all the default functionality that Multi-Vendor can offer for your retail marketplace. Request the demo to explore all the functions.
Of course, this is just a small part of all the default functionality that Multi-Vendor can offer for your retail marketplace. Request the demo to explore all the functions.
Try CS-Cart Multi-Vendor personal demo
Click the button and we'll create a fully-featured online demo for you
Some Successful Booking Marketplaces Built on CS-Cart Multi-Vendor
Retail is the most popular business model and there are hundreds of awesome marketplaces out there. We picked these three to show you:
| This is a villa booking website headquartered in Netherlands. The company holds itself out as an agent for holiday villas in Bali. The company not only provides villas but also staff to look after it, to take care about customers and make their vacation unforgettable. The website now offers 110 villas in Bali. |
| On Pro-Coaching.co.uk one can book various children's sports holiday courses. The marketplace works closely with schools in England and coaches over 10,000 children per week. They have a team of 30 professional coaches that covers almost all physical education activities in 90 schools. The company has been offering sports courses for 18 years now. |
| ComfortCar is one of the oldest car rental companies in Poland. They stated 10 years ago with 5 Mercedes-Benz cars and now they have 500 cars in all big cities of Poland. The company says their prices are super affordable and the service is one of the best on the market. That's why their very first customer is still with them: in November 2018, the guy rented a car from ComfortCart for the 100th time. |
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