Airbnb Strategy When COVID-19 Halts Travel: Choosing Bets for Hosts and Guests
Company: Airbnb
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product leader at Airbnb when the COVID-19 pandemic hits. Border closures, travel restrictions and fear of infection have cut deeply into bookings for both stays and Experiences, and nobody can say how long the disruption will last. What strategy should Airbnb follow during the pandemic?
Explain how you would assess the situation, which options you would consider, how you would choose among them and what you would recommend.
```hint Two sides, two horizons
The pandemic hurts guests and hosts in different ways, and some moves only pay off once travel starts to come back. Before generating ideas, decide what the company must protect right now and what it wants to look like when the crisis ends.
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### Clarifying Questions
- Should the strategy cover the strict lockdown period, the gradual reopening that follows, or both in sequence?
- Is the top priority to protect cash and survive a long downturn, or to come out of the crisis with a stronger market position even if that means spending more now?
- Should the answer address both guests and hosts, and both stays and Experiences, or focus on one part of the business?
- Is this a global strategy, or should it focus on particular regions, given that restrictions differ by country and change often?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A clear analysis of how the pandemic hits each side of the marketplace (guest demand and trust, host income and supply, cancellations) and Airbnb's own finances.
- An explicit objective and time horizon, plus criteria for judging options that go beyond near-term revenue.
- A set of genuinely different strategic options, evaluated against those criteria, ending in a prioritized recommendation rather than a list.
- A plan for keeping hosts on the platform while bookings are scarce, since supply lost now limits the recovery.
- Success metrics, the main risks (health, regulation, refund disputes, brand) and how the plan adapts as the course of the pandemic becomes clearer.
### Follow-up Questions
- Many guests booked trips before the pandemic that they can no longer take. How would you split the cost of those cancellations between guests, hosts and Airbnb?
- If falling revenue forces deep cost cuts, which of your bets would you protect, and why?
- Which of the changes you recommend would you keep once travel recovers?
Overview: A product strategy interview question asking what Airbnb should do while the COVID-19 pandemic shuts down most travel. It tests how a PM assesses the damage to both sides of a marketplace, sets an objective under deep uncertainty, compares strategic options on clear criteria and commits to a prioritized plan with metrics and risks.