Hospitality commerce development: a shop inside every short-term rental
$120k+
Per listing per year, for The Host Co's most successful hosts (their published figure)
Minutes
From a free signup to a live, stocked storefront
US-wide
Sales tax collected and remitted per applicable state law
Everything inside the property became shoppable — the kayak, the firewood, the private chef, the extra two hours.
A short-term rental makes money while its guests are asleep. The Host Co's insight was that it could also make money while they are awake — by making everything inside the property shoppable. In-home massage, a private chef, fresh flowers, late check-out, firewood, kayaks, boats, scooters: all of it sold from a storefront that lives inside the stay. There was no product when we started. We took it from idea to a live commerce platform, built on an open-source MERN stack and deployed on AWS.
The challenge
Every short-term rental sits on demand nobody is serving. The guest is already inside the property, already trusts the host enough to sleep there, and will cheerfully pay for early check-in or a kayak — but only if buying takes seconds. The moment it involves a phone call, a separate website or a conversation about payment, the sale evaporates.
So the product is not a shopping cart. It is several businesses that have to work at once: a storefront a guest will actually use from a phone mid-holiday, a supply side that can genuinely deliver a chef to a house on a Tuesday, money that reaches the host's bank account, and — the part nobody wants to build — sales tax collected and remitted correctly across a country where the rules change at each state line.
There are two failure modes waiting either side of that. An empty storefront, because a host who has to invent a catalogue from nothing will never launch one. And a stolen kayak, because goods left in a holiday rental with a price tag on them are an invitation unless the platform does something about it.
The solution
A platform a host can stand up in minutes, that arrives already stocked, and that handles everything behind the sale.
Everything in the property, priced
The catalogue spans three quite different kinds of thing, and the platform had to make all of them buyable in the same two taps. Curated local services and experiences — in-home massage, private chefs, fresh flower delivery. Stay add-ons like late check-out and early check-in, which are pure margin because nothing has to be delivered. And physical goods sitting in the property already: souvenirs, firewood, kayaks, boats, scooters.
A storefront that arrives already stocked
Signup is free and takes minutes, and the store is not empty when it opens: it comes pre-populated with curated local services for that host's area. This is the difference between a tool and a product — the host's first experience is a catalogue they can edit rather than a blank page they have to fill. From there they customise the offering and share the storefront as a link the guest can open from anywhere.
Three sides, not two
Most commerce software connects a buyer to a seller. This connects three: the guest who buys, the host who earns, and the vendor who actually turns up with the massage table. Vendors come from a national US network and coordinate scheduling directly with the guest, with a concierge available when a booking needs a human. The host, who is often not even in the state, does nothing after listing the item.
Purchase-gated access, because the kayak is right there
Physical goods in an unattended property are a different problem from goods in a shop. The platform gates access behind the purchase — instructions to the item are released by buying it — and pairs that with in-property signage and dispute support. It is a small mechanic that decides whether a host is willing to leave anything sellable in the house at all.
Money out, and the tax nobody wants to touch
Earnings pay out monthly to the host's bank account through Stripe or PayPal, with a 1099-K issued once annual earnings pass the threshold. Underneath, the platform collects sales tax and remits it across US states according to the law that applies — which is the unglamorous machinery that turns a side income into something a host can run without acquiring a tax problem.
Meeting hosts where they already work
Nobody adopts a fifth dashboard. The platform integrates with the booking channels hosts already live on — Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com and Google — and with the property-management systems that run their operations, including Guesty, Hospitable, Lodgify and Hostaway.
How it was built
An open-source MERN stack — MongoDB, Express, React and Node.js — deployed on AWS. That is a deliberate choice rather than a default: a consumer marketplace that has to survive its own growth is better served by a stack its owners can hire for and host anywhere than by a proprietary platform they would have to buy their way out of later. The client owns the code and the infrastructure it runs on.
Results
The Host Co runs as a live commerce platform for short-term rentals across the US market, and reports its most successful hosts earning over $120,000 a year per listing through in-stay sales.
The engagement is best described by the person who commissioned it. Annie Munro Sloan spent years as a Creative Director at Twitter and Facebook before co-founding The Host Co — which is worth knowing before reading her testimonial below, because “added creativity and brought new ideas to the table” is a pointed thing to say about an engineering partner when you have led design at that level yourself.
“They shepherded our software from idea to product — and went above and beyond our asks, adding creativity and bringing new ideas to the table.”
Common questions
Why does a commerce platform have to handle sales tax itself?
Because the alternative is handing every host a compliance problem they did not ask for. Sales tax on goods and services varies by state, and a host renting one cabin is not going to register, file and remit correctly in each one. The platform absorbing that is what makes the product usable by an individual rather than only by a management company.
What stops a guest simply taking the kayak?
Access is gated behind the purchase — buying the item is what releases the instructions to it — supported by signage in the property and dispute resolution when something does go wrong. It does not make theft impossible; it makes leaving sellable goods in an unattended rental a reasonable thing for a host to do.
Was this built from scratch?
Yes. There was no product when the engagement started — the co-founder's own description is that we shepherded the software from idea to product. That is the shape of work we do most often: a founder with a clear idea and no codebase.
Most of what we build is under NDA — yours would be too, unless you told us otherwise. Send the requirement and you get back a functional specification, at no charge.
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