The Nook
Focus on why you’re here.
A booking app that gets out of the way.
The Nook is Schlepp’s furnished-stays arm: rooms in the buildings they built, run by the people who built them. Nobody travels to manage where they sleep, so the product had to handle the stay and then get out of the way. We designed the brand, the site and the booking engine, and built all of it.
Getting into it
Schlepp builds the buildings. The Nook rents the rooms in them, by the night. The brief was simple to say and hard to do: let a guest book a nook in three steps, pay once, and never need to call anyone. This is how we thought about it, designed it, and built it.
I · The problem
Nobody travels to manage where they sleep.
Short stays in Lagos run on WhatsApp, deposits and guesswork. The Nook had to let a guest find a room, pay once and get a door code, with nobody on the other end. That is a UX problem and an engineering problem, and we treated it as one.
II · The rules
We wrote the rules before we drew a screen.
Three decisions do most of the work. None of them are about screens.
A taken night gets an answer, not a no.
When your dates hit a block, the engine offers three answers, in order: another nook for the whole stay, one move mid-stay, or our nights plus help with the rest.
Empty nights get filled.
A short gap between bookings can be booked below the minimum stay. An empty night helps nobody.
The guest never does admin.
The booking lives at a private link. Nights are held while you pay and released if you don’t. Accounts come next, for offers and a line to the team.
III · The experience
Three steps, then a link.
Your stay, your details, confirmed. No account, no app to install. Every booking lives at a private link the guest can manage from, and a reference they can find it by.
The flow
Your stay, your details, confirmed. Then a link.
Dates and guests first, with the price shown as you pick. Extras like airport pickup and a chauffeur fold into the same page. Pay once with Paystack. The confirmation page is the booking: a private link to manage it, an .ics for the calendar, and a reference to find it by later.
IV · The admin
Run from one calendar.
The host side lives inside the Schlepp admin. One calendar per nook: click a night, or drag a run, then block it, price it or set a minimum. Bookings, moves, money and history sit on one page each. Earnings are counted by the month a stay starts.
The host calendar
Click a night. Drag a run. Then decide.
Every night shows its price. Stays are green bars with the guest’s name, held bookings are pale, blocked nights are struck through, and a small orange dot marks a night taken by Airbnb or Booking.com. Select nights and the panel on the right edits them together. Leave without saving and the calendar stops you.
A booking, start to finish
One page per stay. Money, moves and history in one place.
The team marks the door code sent and the stay completed. A move shows as two segments with one line of instruction. Earnings count by the month a stay starts, paid and upcoming.
All figures in these screens are sample data.
V · Engineering
Built to be trusted with money and keys.
Next.js and Supabase, shared with the Schlepp admin. Four things make it trustworthy with money and keys.
- 01
One engine, no I/O, tested.
Every rule in one file, written over nights, with a test suite for moves, gaps, discounts and extras.
- 02
Money is verified twice.
The server quotes, Paystack charges, the webhook and a verify call confirm. The browser never sets a price.
- 03
Calendars that agree.
Airbnb and Booking.com feeds, turnover buffers and holds that expire by cron, all folded into one map of taken nights.
- 04
Shared with Schlepp.
Next.js and Supabase, one database with the admin. Email by Resend, an .ics for the calendar, a manage link instead of an account.
Acknowledgement
Nkem Lotanna
COO, Schlepp Properties · Lagos
The Nook is the first Schlepp product we built end to end. Thank you to the Schlepp team for trusting us with the stay, the money and the keys.
Credits