Over the years, the nomadic culture has become extensively popular as many adventure-enthusiasts are leaving the conventional home-based lifestyle and choosing to stay in RVs. The ‘van-life’ culture not only saves individuals from hefty mortgages, but also allows them to travel anywhere they want along with a motorhome.
It means by the end of the day they can simply park their van anywhere they want and kick back in complete comfort. In addition to these full-time RV-enthusiasts, there are some weekend warriors who only prefer living this nomadic lifestyle for a few days.
Since they don’t need to live in an RV full-time, they rent such remote vans for the desired period. For such consumers, businesses like RVShare come into play.
RV Share is an online RV rental marketplace where customers can rent different types of RVs and campervans. As of today, the website has listed 60,000 different RVs that users can choose from. Not to mention, the unique business model of the company made it raise nearly $30 million in funding.
Due to its incredible success in the market, many business owners also want to leverage the potential of this untapped market by launching their own RV rental marketplaces. So, in this guide, we’ll walk you through the detailed process on how to start an online marketplace such as RVShare.
What Made RVShare a Huge Success and an Introduction to its Business Model?
Before RVShare, anyone looking to rent an RV or a motorhome would have to make dozens of calls and hope to get the vehicle in a decent condition.
But, thanks to RVShare, people could now compare different vehicle options and virtually inspect the condition of different campervans. This transparency in RVShare’s business model made it customer-favorite and that’s why many people shifted from the conventional methods of booking an RV to RVShare.
As far as scalability is concerned, RVShare is probably among the most profitable business models. How? Several studies suggest that nearly 40 million people in the USA go RVing during their vacations.
What’s more interesting is that more than half of these individuals do not own a RV of their own and usually rent one from a business like RVShare.
In short, if you start a business like RVShare, it’ll help you step into an untapped market and gain a decent yearly revenue.
How Does RVShare Work?
Being an online marketplace, RVShare simply connects customers to RV owners who are willing to rent out their vehicle. The website mainly includes three different stakeholders including:
- Renters (RV Owners)
- Consumers (People looking to rent RVs and Campervans)
- Admin (Administrator overlooking the entire business operations)
The renters or RV owners start out by listing their vehicles on the website and optimize it by adding information such as vehicle type, miles covered, amenities, etc. After creating a vehicle listing, it goes under approval to the administration team, which they can verify and approve. Once approved, the listing goes live and customers are able to see it on the website.
When a consumer chooses to rent a vehicle, he can directly get in touch with the owners to resolve any underlying queries. Once satisfied with the vehicle’s condition, the user can move towards making the payment.
What are the Key Features of an RV Rental Marketplace like RVShare?
In addition to a user engaging and easy-to-navigate user interface, it’s also crucial to integrate several other features into your RV rental website to build a successful business like RVShare.
Of course, choosing the right features will mainly depend on your business objectives, but here are a few common functionalities that are essential for every RV rental marketplace.
1. Search Box
The journey of renting an RV starts with a simple search. In general, people have a rough idea about the type of vehicle they want to rent.
So, make sure that your website’s home page has a dedicated search bar where users can select multiple parameters such as the vehicle category, number of sleepers, duration, price range, etc.
Configuring these parameters in advance will allow users to narrow down the search results to the most specific vehicles. Consequently, they’ll be able to make the right decision more conveniently.
2. Featured RV’s
To get a better exposure for their vehicle listings, RV owners can also run paid ads on the website and display their listing inside the featured list.
This small feature will not only help RV owners get more bookings, but also make it easier for you to boost your revenue. For every booking through the featured list, you can further charge additional commission from the RV owners and skyrocket your overall business revenue.
3. Sign-In as a Renter
Instead of creating separate panels for renters and rentees, you can simply integrate the “Sign-In as a Renter” button on the homepage of the website.
Clicking this button will directly take users to the listings page where they can create their user profile and add relevant information to create a new vehicle listing. Renters can also manage bookings and respond to customer queries through their account.
4. Types of RVs
As we mentioned earlier, RVShare has nearly 60,000 different vehicle listings. Browsing through such an extensive list is not an easy task for customers.
That’s why you must categorize these listings based on the vehicle type. By simply choosing the vehicle type, users could narrow down the available listing to the most suitable options.
5. Integrated Payment Support
Like any other online marketplace, your RV rental website will also need a dedicated payment gateway support.
To do this, your team of professional web developers could simply integrate one of the existing payment APIs into your website. This way you’ll be able to accept online payments using the customer’s preferred method and allow users to process payments in a fully secured environment.
6. Chatbot Integration
Integrated AI-powered chat support is another unique feature that could put your website ahead of the curve.
Today, several service providers offer full-scale chatbot APIs developers can integrate into a website. With chatbot integration, you can easily address the most common user queries and respond to customers within seconds.
How to Develop a RV Rental Website Like RVShare?
After you’ve evaluated all the features, the next step would be to move towards the development phase.
When it comes to building an RV rental website like RVshare, you can either recruit in-house developers or outsource the task to a team of offshore web developers. We recommend choosing the latter as working with a team of third-party developers is an affordable option.
Moreover, a professional web development company like NetSpark Solutions relies on modern-day tech stack and implements the best development practices to build feature-driven websites for their clients. Moreover, they usually rely on a variety of engagement models to offer the best assistance to their clients.
Conclusion
Launching an RV rental marketplace is one of the most sought after business opportunities as a wide range of modern-day population prefers this nomadic lifestyle and renting RVs is the only option for them. You can also start your online rental marketplace like RVShare and let customers connect with RV owners to find the perfect RV vehicle for their vacations.
