Decide whether Instagram should enter travel and assess how it could build it
Company: LinkedIn
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Walk the interviewer through how you would decide whether Instagram should build a travel product. Your answer is expected to run from evaluating the opportunity all the way to judging how feasible it would be to build, if you conclude that Instagram should go ahead. The interviewer suggests you factor in Instagram's current ecosystem as you reason.
```hint Two separate tests
A big market is not enough. Check both whether travelers have a problem worth solving and whether Instagram holds an advantage in solving it that a dedicated travel company lacks.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Does "travel product" mean inspiration and trip planning, booking flights and stays, or help during the trip, or should I choose where in the journey to play?
- What would success mean for Instagram: more engagement, new revenue from bookings or ads, or a stronger position as the place people discover where to go?
- Is Instagram willing to partner with travel booking companies, or does it want to own the transaction and the customer relationship?
- Over what time frame does the bet need to show results?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A structured go or no-go evaluation: the traveler's problem across the trip journey, the competitive landscape, and Instagram's own goals.
- Specific use of Instagram's ecosystem (travel content and creators, location tags and map search, saves, sharing in messages, the ads business) as both assets and constraints.
- A clear recommendation with a scoped product concept rather than "it depends".
- Feasibility: build versus partner, supply of inventory, customer service, regulation, cost, and a phased rollout.
- Success metrics, a kill criterion, and risks such as channel conflict with travel advertisers or the feed feeling like a catalog.
### Follow-up Questions
- A large online travel agency offers to supply all inventory for a revenue share. What do you gain and what do you give up?
- If you could track only one metric during the first phase of the launch, which would it be and why?
- How would you stop travel features from making the main feed feel like advertising?
Overview: A product strategy question asking whether Instagram should build a travel product and how. It tests evaluating the opportunity against Instagram's existing ecosystem, reaching a clear go or no-go recommendation, and judging feasibility, including partners, operations, metrics and risks.