Development of Hybrid Full Stack Application for Vacation Rentals

Abstract

This application has been developed for a start-up xxx. In recent years Pakistan has witnessed exponential growth in tourism sector. Starting from second highest mountain K2 in Himalayas to the long beaches of Arabian sea, Pakistan offers a variety of different landscapes. In addition, Pakistan also has remains of one of the oldest civilizations in the world and has religious sites sacred to Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims. Currently, there is no platform which provides one stop solution to all needs of the tourists visiting Pakistan. Services are scattered across many platforms and in some areas of tourism industry, there is no digitisation at all. Over the past decade, there is huge investment by the government in the networking and information technology infrastructure throughout Pakistan. This makes it an ideal time to digitise tourism sector in Pakistan.

This start-up aims to tap into this huge potential and provide a multidimensional platform which will cater all needs of the local and international tourists visiting Pakistan. Prominent services to be provided by start-up include ability to book and post rental places, book air, bus and train tickets and travel guides for travel spots throughout Pakistan. This start-up is in planning phases. This application is one of the many applications developed for this platform. The final application will provide features such as the ability to book rental places, communication through application’s in-built messenger with the rental place owners, the ability to pay using local payment methods such as mobile wallet and even cash. Its first prototype has been developed for this final year project. The application includes backend and front-end hybrid mobile client (for both iOS and Android) development. Back end comprises of a server, database and cloud storage. The server is written with Node.js and Express. MongoDB will serve as database for this application. For file storage Amazon S3 (object-based storage) provided by Amazon web services has been used. In the first prototype, users can search and post hotel rooms, apartments, villas, camping sites etc. Users can also log in and save a list of favourite rental places in their profile. Next steps involve testing this prototype with real users and finalising requirements for second prototype.