Learn How React Native Served At Airbnb

We bet that you have heard about Airbnb. After all, it is one of the most amazing sites that people tend to use these days. So, it is quite understood that you are familiar with the platform in the best sense. However, it is one thing to know about it and a whole other thing to be familiar with everything.

Did you know? Airbnb has about 150 million users in total and there are about 2.9 million hosts in the platform of Airbnb.

So, there is no doubt that familiarizing yourself with the Airbnb facts would be of great use to you. Did you know that Airbnb started using React Native a while ago? Don’t you want to know about the latest developments that happened with Airbnb and React Native?

Well, this is exactly what we are going to talk about in here.

An Introduction To React Native With Airbnb

Airbnb has launched about 10 years ago and at that time, smartphones where just in the infancy phase. However, with the passage of time, we know that they have been pretty popular. After all, we use smartphones for each and every single task in our lives right.

Food for thought: There are about 2.71 billion users of smartphones in the world.

So, the use of smartphones has clearly increased in the world. For that reason, Airbnb wanted to have a huge hold on the smartphone front. The community helped a lot in making sure that people had all the means to travel. For that, they needed an application.

Since mobile platforms were the only choice, so they went with a react native development company.

Fun Fact: There are about 100 mobile engineers working at the moment in Airbnb.

Taking A Chance with React Native

Airbnb was continually evaluating all the new technologies which would help them in improving the customer experience for the people. In such a case, React Native came to be a very useful tool for them.
Back then, you might know that the mobile applications where the only thing that worked. However, Airbnb didn’t really have that many engineers for the mobile application creation. So, they started to work in a more alternative position.

We bet you didn’t know this, but the Airbnb website was built with the help of React Native. It was a match made in heaven for these two brands for sure. The software was pretty much effective and liked by the people. So, there is no doubt that they say React Native as the best opportunity to have mobile application development in the best way.

In the meantime, they started developing more and more codes with the help of the cross-platform nature of React Native. Who wouldn’t have done that? We bet if you had the chance, you would have made the choice to hire react native developer.

However, there were some risks involved in the whole thing for sure. After all, they were trying to add a whole new and fast-moving platform to the codebase that they have. The platform also had enough potential to fragment the codebase instead of making it unified. However, they had decided to make things right.

They wanted to use React Native for:

• Allowing them to move a bit faster as a proper organization
• Maintaining the bar of quality that was set by Native applications
• Writing product codes for mobile platforms
• Improving the experience of the developer

Sharing The Experience Of React Native

Sharing the experience of Airbnb with React Native is very important because you would definitely want to know about it for sure. Well, React Native has been with the company for about 2 years now. The experiment turned out to be a pretty serious effort.

They managed to create some pretty strong integrations systems with the applications that they built using React Native. You might be able to see some amazing native features in there such as parallax, shared element transition, as well as geofencing.

Not just that but they also managed to minimize the bride created in the existing infrastructure that they had.

For example, They made some considerable changes in the networking, internationalization, and experimentation front. This was all done with the help of React Native.

With the help of React Native, they also managed to launch some fantastic products for sure. Have you ever heard of Experiences? This was one of the newest businesses that AirBnb had.

Did you know that there were some other features as well, such as gift cards and reviews? Wouldn’t you think that it was quite a significant investment that they made with some amazing returns for sure? Most of these amazing features were built during the time they didn’t really have enough numbers of native engineers for the tasks.

So, we can say that with React Native, a lot of their tasks became a lot easier and that too in the best way. Different teams using the platform of React Native had some very different experiences with it for sure.

For example: React Native was a proper tool to use, which was effective in some functions and features. The cross-platform nature of React Native proved to be really efficient for sure. However, when it came to the organizational and technical front, there were some challenges as well. There were some problems with the JavaScript tooling and the immaturity of React Native. There we some other experiences that they had as well.

Moving Ahead From React Native

Although the React Native platform was pretty useful for the people, there were some challenges as well. There were many teams that relied on React Native. So, they have already planned on using the platform for a very long period of time. However, the platform didn’t really prove to be much useful for long-term goals.

Also, there were some organization and technical problems as well that we mentioned above. So, there was no other option than just sunsetting the React Native front in Airbnb. Don’t you think that is kind of sad for the company?

But then they had no other choice, right? After all, the company was not able to meet the goals that they had.

• Move Faster

React Native worked pretty well for a certain amount of time for the mobile engineers in Airbnb. However, due to the issues, there was no further improvement being made. So, the projects were getting all delayed and that decreased the reputation of the company. What would you have done at that point?

• Maintaining The Bar Of Quality

With the recent maturity of React Native, there was more expertise in the platform for sure. There were some arrangements made which were not really possible before. The company managed to have parallax and geo-fencing as well. This particularly improved website performance. However, there were some technical challenges here, as well.

For example: With the challenges of initialization as well as the async first render made things difficult for the company to meet its goals. Apart from that, there was also lacking in the resources too. So, that made things even tougher for the company.

Writing Code

We all know that React Native code can be easily shared across different platforms. However, the Airbnb apps just used a little part of React Native for the creation. In addition to that, there was a very large bridging that happened in the infrastructure. So, this made the work of engineers even more difficult.

Hence, they had to get supporting codes for the platforms instead of just two. That is one of the main reasons they wanted to move on from React Native.

Since the company of Airbnb wasn’t able to meet their goals, there was no other choice but to leave React Native. In the year 2019, they began the change and decided to invest in the Native front. This was a pretty big change for sure.

What Is In The Future?

The times are really exciting in the future for the amazing Airbnb Company. Although they did all the experimenting with React Native, they are looking forward to the changes. There are some efforts that are being made on the native front this time. In the present times, they have some pretty exciting projects which are in line for the company.

You will be a bit surprised to know this. Some of the projects are an inspiration from the experiences and learnings that they had from React Native. So, there is no doubt that changing from React Native to the other front will not be that difficult.

For example, The value code-writing from React Native will still be a practice in the company. Now, doesn’t that seem like such an amazing thing?

So, this is all you need to know about the journey of React Native in the Airbnb Company. There is no doubt that even after leaving the platform, Airbnb will still keep in mind the positive things about the software.

Chandresh Patel View all post

Chandresh Patel is a founder & CEO at Bacancy Technology. He is a founder of vision and mission of Bacancy Technology and constructed work ethics @bacancytech to achieve that vision and mission. He oversees Business development, day to day execution of strategic planning and also looks after customer service & delivery. He's an avid blogger and writes on the publications like Dzone, e27.co , Marketo, Smart Insights and featured in Insightssuccess.