RVPlusYou is a peer-to-peer RV rental marketplace. We built it on BistroStays, customised it around how owners and renters actually transact, and supported it through the sale of the business.
Marketplace, bookings, payments, owner tools, and support - live from a single vehicle to hundreds of listings.
RVPlusYou was founded by Cees Dobbe and Russ Lovell to connect RV owners with people who wanted to rent one, without the paperwork, the phone calls, and the uncertainty of renting from a stranger.
They did not want to invent a marketplace from zero. They wanted a proven foundation they could shape around their own rules: how listings are priced, how owners are approved, how bookings are confirmed, and how both sides are protected. That is what BistroStays gave them, and what we customised with them.
We stayed on as the engineering team behind the platform, maintaining it, extending it, and supporting the business as it grew from a single RV listed at launch to hundreds of rentals.
The owner and the renter want opposite things from the same screen. The platform had to serve both without making either feel like a second-class user.
RV listings with photos, specs, availability, and location-aware search.
Date-based availability, quotes, deposits, and payments handled end to end.
Owners manage listings, calendars, pricing, and payouts themselves.
Renters and owners talk inside the platform, with the booking history attached.
Profiles, verification, and reviews on both sides of the transaction.
Pricing rules, approvals, and the operational support the business needed as it scaled.
The platform carried the business from its first listing to hundreds of rentals, with the same team maintaining and supporting it throughout. In May 2023, Cees and Russ sold the business.
A sale is usually where a build like this ends badly: the buyer inherits software nobody understands. We stayed with the new owners through migration and occasional support, so the platform kept running and the listings kept booking.
Today we would put an agent on owner onboarding and support: answering availability and pricing questions, chasing listing quality, and drafting replies in the owner's tone. The marketplace itself is the same build. The operations behind it would need fewer people.
Ideas like this are why we built Brahma - our AI Foundation platform of agents that connect to your systems and do the work. See how Brahma works.