Roomer Travel
A Travel Marketplace working in more than 20 countries
Project overview
Roomer Travel is A Travel Marketplace working in more than 20 countries A marketplace for selling & buying discounted hotel reservations, right now working in more than 20 countries. Built with high standards for performance, security, and intuitive user experiences, the platform is engineered to support mission-critical workflows and seamless scale.
What was the problem or pain point
Client Dilemma & Technical Bottleneck
Roomer Travel created the world's leading marketplace for non-refundable hotel reservations, enabling travelers who cannot make their trip to sell their prepaid hotel rooms to other travelers seeking discounted accommodations. The primary technical hurdle was verifying the legitimacy of hotel reservations across thousands of disparate hotel chains and global booking systems (GDS), automating the legal guest name transfer on hotel room folios, and safeguarding against fraudulent reservation listings.
What we suggested to the client
Solid Sphere Architectural Recommendation
Solid Sphere recommended building an automated reservation verification and buyer escrow ecosystem. We advised creating custom API and web scraping connectors to automatically cross-reference booking confirmation numbers with hotel central reservation systems (CRS), paired with an automated escrow payment engine that withholds seller payouts until the buyer successfully checks into the hotel.
What made this project challenging
Creating a secondary marketplace for non-refundable hotel room reservations across 20+ countries
Verifying reservation authenticity automatically with major hotel booking systems
Handling secure buyer-seller escrow transfers with zero cancellation risk
Building an intuitive discovery search engine across dynamic date ranges and global destinations
What was implemented and how it was implemented
Step-by-Step Technical Execution
We re-architected the web application using React on the frontend and Ruby on Rails on the backend, optimizing the reservation listing wizard to automatically infer hotel amenities, room categories, and market prices. We built an automated reservation validation service that queries hotel APIs and automated confirmation parsers to verify reservation validity, check-in dates, and cancellation penalties. For marketplace security, we integrated Stripe to handle buyer charges and implemented an escrow payout scheduler: buyers pay upfront, and funds are disbursed to sellers only after hotel check-in is confirmed via automated folio verification. To deliver instantaneous hotel search across millions of rooms, we implemented an Elasticsearch cluster with geospatial radius filtering and live pricing comparisons against Expedia and Booking.com.
How we delivered
Engineered automated reservation verification scrapers and API integrations with hotel chains
Developed high-conversion React search portal with Elasticsearch-powered destination filtering
Implemented secure escrow payment flow holding funds until successful hotel check-in verification
Created automated room name-change coordination system interfacing with hotel front desks
What did we use to implement it
Technology Stack & Technical Rationale
React provided a fast, responsive travel booking interface with interactive calendar pickers and hotel gallery carousels. Ruby on Rails managed marketplace transaction states, escrow holds, and reservation validation workflows. PostgreSQL stored structured transactional data, user profiles, and hotel property databases. Elasticsearch enabled sub-50ms full-text and geospatial search across hotel catalogs. Stripe powered secure multi-currency payment collection and seller escrow disbursements.
Key outcomes
Featured on CNN, NYT, and TechCrunch
Over $50M in non-refundable rooms saved for travelers
Active listings across 20+ countries and thousands of hotels
99.6% successful check-in fulfillment rate
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