Design a hotel valet product: guests, attendants, first version and success metrics
Company: Google
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
As a product manager, you are asked to create a valet offering for hotels. Explain who it serves, which problems it solves first, what the first version includes, and how you would tell whether it works.
```hint Choose a party and a moment
Valet involves several parties: the guest, the attendant doing the work, and the hotel or the valet company it hires. Pick whose problem you will solve first, and the moment in their experience that hurts most, before listing features.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Does "valet" mean car valet parking, or an in-hotel valet that handles errands such as luggage, laundry and deliveries to rooms?
- Are we a single hotel improving its own service, or a company selling the product to many hotels, and which kinds of hotels (city business hotels, resorts, luxury or budget)?
- Are we building software for an existing valet team, or providing the whole service including the attendants?
- What matters most to the business: guest satisfaction, valet revenue or the hotel's operating cost?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A stated interpretation of "valet", the paying customer and the goal the product serves
- Segmentation of guests (overnight versus visiting for a meal or event, business versus leisure), attendants and hotel managers, with a reasoned focus
- Concrete pain points across handoff, storage and return, and solutions ranked by impact and effort into a first version
- Success metrics such as the time to get the car or item back, with guardrails for damage, loss and staff workload
- Valet-specific risks: handing a car or item to the wrong person, liability for damage, checkout and event surges, and whether attendants will adopt the tool
### Follow-up Questions
- On checkout mornings many guests want their cars at once. How does your product cope?
- How would you charge hotels for this, and would guests see a separate fee?
- Attendants say the app slows them down and stop using it. What do you change?
Overview: A product design question asking a product manager to create a valet offering for hotels. It tests how the candidate defines the service and its paying customer, segments guests, attendants and hotel operators, ranks pain points around handoff and retrieval, and sets success metrics with safety and liability guardrails.