Airbnb strategy for adding hotel rooms to a homes-first marketplace
Company: Airbnb
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager at Airbnb. The company wants to sell hotel stays on a platform that guests mostly know for homes run by individual hosts. Explain how you would work out the right way to do it: which travelers and which hotels to focus on, how hotels would get onto the platform and appear to guests, how Airbnb would make money from them, and how you would tell whether the move is working.
```hint Follow the trips Airbnb loses
Ask which trips Airbnb guests currently book somewhere else, and why a home did not fit them. The answer tells you which hotels are worth adding and where they should show up.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Does "selling hotels" mean helping guests book hotel rooms on Airbnb, persuading hotels to list their rooms, or building both sides of that market?
- Which properties are in scope: independent and boutique hotels only, or large chains as well?
- What is the main objective: keeping guests who now book hotels on other sites, adding supply in cities where home listings are scarce or restricted, or opening a new revenue line?
- Should hotels appear in the main search results next to homes, or in a separate part of the product?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- An objective for adding hotels that fits Airbnb's two-sided marketplace and weighs the risk of diluting what makes Airbnb different.
- A reasoned choice of traveler segments and trip types to serve with hotels, and of which hotel types to recruit first.
- A supply plan: how hotel rooms, rates and availability reach Airbnb, and on what commercial terms compared with other booking sites.
- A guest experience that presents hotels clearly next to homes, including search ranking, labeling, reviews and cancellation rules.
- A rollout and measurement plan with success metrics and guardrails, including the effect on existing hosts and on home bookings.
### Follow-up Questions
- Existing hosts complain that hotels are pushing their listings down in search results. How do you respond?
- How would you test whether hotel bookings are new business rather than guests who would have booked a home on Airbnb anyway?
- A large hotel chain offers thousands of rooms but asks for a lower commission than other hosts pay. Do you accept, and on what terms?
Overview: A product strategy question on how Airbnb should sell hotel rooms on a marketplace built around homes. It tests choosing which travelers and hotels to target, designing supply integration and search presentation, setting a business model, and measuring incremental bookings without hurting existing hosts.