Airbnb Business-Travel Product: Serving Employees, Employers and Hosts
Company: Coinbase
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Design a version of Airbnb built for work rather than for vacations.
```hint Look past the guest
A stay for work usually involves more than the person sleeping there: someone at the employer approves and pays, and a host has to want this kind of guest. Ask where a home, rather than a hotel room, is genuinely better for working, and for whom.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Does "for work" mean employees staying somewhere on business trips, colleagues gathering for team offsites, or people booking a space to work from during the day?
- Is the customer the person who travels, or the company that sets the travel policy and pays the bill?
- Should I focus on short trips of a night or two, or on stays of several weeks for projects and relocations?
- Which employers are in scope: large enterprises that buy travel through a managed program, or small and mid-size firms that have none?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A clear choice of what "for work" means, and why Airbnb's homes give it a right to win there against hotels.
- The three parties in a work stay (the employee, the employer that approves and pays, and the host) and which segment to serve first, with reasons.
- Pain points specific to working from a rented home, such as unreliable workspace and internet, disruption mid-trip, and policy approval and expensing.
- A prioritized set of solutions with a first release that covers both the traveler's experience and the employer's controls.
- Success metrics with guardrails, and risks such as supply quality, host reluctance and local short-term rental rules.
### Follow-up Questions
- Many hosts are wary of guests booked by a company. How would you build enough work-ready supply in the cities that matter most?
- How would you verify that a listing's desk and internet are actually good enough for work, and keep that true over time?
- An employee wants to stay on at the same home for a personal weekend after a work trip. How should booking and payment handle it?
Overview: A product design prompt about building a version of Airbnb for work rather than vacation travel. It tests how a candidate scopes an ambiguous brief, weighs the needs of employees, employers and hosts, chooses a first segment, prioritizes solutions and defines success metrics.