Airbnb Reservation System Design
Visual Problem Diagram
Scenario
Guest pays for July 4 weekend while host calendar still shows open on another channel—channel manager sync and atomic date-range booking prevent double-booking nightmares. Focus on reservation core, not full marketplace search.
Design the reservation subsystem for short-term rentals: per-listing calendars, booking a date range, payment integration, and cancellations. Hosts lose trust on calendar double-booking and wrong pricing at confirm time.
You should support availability, reserve/confirm, pricing quotes, cancel policies, and external calendar sync hooks. Be ready to explain overlap prevention and hold/confirm payment flow.
Constraints
Calendar per listing, book date range, pricing quote, payment hold/capture, cancel/refund, iCal sync
Zero overlap on confirmed bookings, quote stable during hold TTL, 99.99% book path
Millions listings, peak holiday contention per city, sync from external calendars