Analyze the trust, search and booking design behind Airbnb's app
Company: Microsoft
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
What makes Airbnb a good app? Walk through the product decisions that support your view.
```hint Two customers
Every booking has two customers. Judge the app from the host's side as well as the guest's.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Should I evaluate the guest experience, the host tools, or both?
- Should I focus on booking stays, or also cover Experiences and the other services Airbnb offers?
- Do you want only what it does well, or also where it falls short and what I would change?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- The core job Airbnb does for guests and for hosts, and why trust between strangers is the hard part of this marketplace
- Specific product decisions (search and discovery, listing pages, reviews, payments, messaging) and the problem each one solves
- How those decisions show up in results such as booking conversion, repeat bookings and host supply
- An honest weakness with a concrete improvement and a way to measure it
### Follow-up Questions
- If you were Airbnb's PM, which metric would you treat as the north star, and what guardrail would you pair with it?
- Where does Airbnb lose to a hotel booking app, and what should it do about that?
- What is one feature you would remove or simplify, and why?
Overview: A product sense interview question asking the candidate to explain what makes Airbnb a good app. It tests whether the candidate can connect product decisions in search, listings, reviews and payments to the needs of both guests and hosts, judge how the marketplace builds trust, and offer a measured critique with a fix.