Wenjoy — UAE Staycation Marketplace — a closer look
A snapshot of the strategy, design and delivery behind this project. Full case study coming soon.
The brief
Build a UAE-first staycation marketplace where independent holiday-home operators can list properties and travellers can book direct — bypassing the 15–25 % commissions that international OTAs charge across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and the wider Emirates.
Approach
The architecture splits the platform into three coordinated surfaces: a public search and property-detail experience, an operator dashboard for multi-host listing management and bookings, and a back-of-house admin layer for moderation and trust signals. Built on Laravel for the data model and APIs, with Bootstrap on the frontend for fast iteration and a familiar mobile-first experience for UAE travellers.
Stack
- Laravel 11 · PHP 8.2 · MySQL 8
- Bootstrap 5 · Blade · vanilla JS
- Stripe + UAE BNPL options (Tabby, Tamara) for booking checkout
- Image pipeline for property galleries with WebP variants
Results
- 150+ live listings across UAE staycations on launch.
- Multi-host onboarding flow live with property-management dashboard.
- Direct booking checkout — no OTA commission tier in the middle.