Design an in-memory hotel booking system
Company: Imc
Role: Software Engineer
Category: System Design
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
Design a **hotel booking system** that supports reservations **without using any database**. You may only use **in-memory data structures**.
### Requirements
Define APIs/data structures to support at least:
- Add hotels, room types, and room inventory (or individual rooms)
- Search availability for a date range (check-in, check-out)
- Create a booking (reserve room(s))
- Cancel a booking
- Prevent double-booking under concurrent requests
### Constraints/notes
- All state is in memory (assume a single process unless you choose to extend to multiple nodes).
- Clarify assumptions (e.g., time zones, check-out exclusivity, maximum date horizon).
- Discuss complexity trade-offs and how you would handle concurrency.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design in-memory data models, concurrency control mechanisms, and temporal reservation logic for booking systems.