Airbnb Integration for Guesty: Rebuilt for Speed, Stability, and Simpler Development

Context and Challenge

Guesty helps users manage short-term rentals across multiple platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com. A key part of their platform is the integration with these external channels, including Airbnb — one of the most widely used.  

Before our team joined the project, Guesty already had an existing integration with Airbnb. This integration allowed property managers to sync their listings, reservations, calendars, and other data between the two platforms. However, over time, the integration became less effective. 

The main challenges of Guesty’s integration with Airbnb included the following:

• Poor performance and slow synchronization. The integration was built a long time ago using a monorepo. Syncing listings, reservations, or calendars took too long. The slow performance caused delays for property managers who needed real-time updates. 

• Frequent errors and bugs. The old code had a lot of issues. Features sometimes didn’t work correctly or broke after updates. This led to serious reliability problems.  

• Lack of observability to monitor issues. There were no tools to monitor errors. The team couldn’t see what went wrong or when it happened. Without alerts or logs, bugs were hard to find and fix. 

• High number of support tickets. Users submitted 20–30 support tickets every week. Most of them were critical problems caused by the broken integration. This resulted in a growing workload for the support team. 

• Limited scalability. The system was not built to grow easily. Adding new features or making improvements took a lot of time and risked breaking existing features. 

Facing all these issues, Guesty extended their R&D team by hiring Forbytes’ software engineers. Their common aim was to improve Guesty’s integration with Airbnb and ensure seamless experience for end users. 

How We Approached the Project

To ensure we met Guesty’s goals, we took a structured and methodical approach, addressing each objective step by step. Here’s how we handled the project: 

1.Decreasing the number of support tickets

We started by collaborating closely with the Guesty team to analyze the support ticket history. Together, we identified and categorized issues based on their impact.  

Critical issues were prioritized, and we immediately addressed these to reduce the most urgent pain points. Gradually, we moved on to resolving less critical issues.  

By taking this systematic approach, we reduced the number of weekly support tickets from nearly 30 to just 10, with the majority of remaining tickets being minor and less time-consuming. 

2. Updating the codebase

The existing code was migrated from a monorepo to a more modular and dedicated environment. This restructuring made the system more independent and easier to manage.  

Along with this transition, we rewrote the code in TypeScript, enhancing both the scalability and maintainability of the system. This shift helped streamline future updates and reduced technical debt of the Guesty’s integration with Airbnb. 

3. Introducing observability and alerting

To improve monitoring and issue detection, we implemented a comprehensive observability solution. We integrated InfluxDB for metric collection and connected it to Grafana for advanced visualization.  

This setup allowed us to configure real-time alerts, sending notifications directly to Slack whenever an issue arose. The ability to monitor system health and receive immediate alerts enabled us to respond quickly and efficiently to problems if any. 

4. Speeding up the integration flow

We conducted a deep dive into the integration flow to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Through extensive code optimization, we were able to accelerate the entire process. As a result, integration flows now run 4 times faster, significantly improving the overall system performance and reducing delays. 

5. Creating documentation

To ensure that all future development was well-documented, we implemented a system for automatically generating documentation with each new feature release.  

This practice improved the transparency of the development process and made it easier for the team to onboard new developers or refer to past work. 

6. Automating code testing

We integrated automated testing scripts into the development workflow, ensuring that each change was rigorously tested before being deployed.  

This proactive testing approach reduced the likelihood of errors and bugs, leading to higher-quality releases. 

7. Enhancing project execution with scrum methodology

To improve team coordination and project transparency, we shifted the project management approach to Scrum. This methodology introduced clear sprints, regular reviews, and retrospectives, giving the team greater visibility into progress and allowing for better adjustments along the way.  

Scrum also provided a more structured framework for handling complex tasks, leading to more efficient project execution. 

8. Speeding up feature development

By fine-tuning the code, implementing a more effective project management methodology, and introducing robust observability, we were able to accelerate feature development at the same time. 

Each of these initiatives played a critical role in achieving the project’s goals, ensuring both immediate improvements and long-term value for Guesty. 

Detailed Execution Timeline

For the Airbnb integration part, Forbytes follows the software development life cycle (SDLC) approach with 2-week sprints. The key stages include: 

1. Planning
2. Analysis 
3. Design 
4. Development 
5. Testing 
6. Integration 
7. Support and maintenance 

Also, our team regularly uses Scrum routines such as daily standups, sprint planning, and retrospectives to ensure the project plan is met in accordance with Guesty’s expectations.

Technology Stack

Cloud storage: S3, 
Database: MongoDB
Cloud: AWS
Other tools: Redis, RabbitMQ, Kafka