Facebook Travel Product: Pick the Users, Problems and MVP Meta Should Build

You are a product manager at Meta. Design a product that brings Facebook into the travel industry. Decide whom it should serve, which of their problems it should solve, what you would build first, and how you would measure whether it is succeeding. ```hint Start from what Facebook has Before listing features, ask what Facebook has that a booking site does not, and which stage of a trip, from picking a destination to sharing photos afterward, those assets help most. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Does "the travel industry" mean travelers who plan and share trips on Facebook, travel businesses such as hotels, airlines and tour operators that want to reach those travelers, or both? - Should the product live inside the Facebook app next to Groups, Events and Messenger, or be a separate app? - Which outcome matters most to leadership: more connection and engagement among users, or new revenue from travel bookings and advertising? - Is Facebook willing to handle bookings and payments itself, or should it rely on existing booking partners? The interviewer may decline to settle any of these, leaving the region, platform, business objective and product all open. In that case, state your own assumption for each, say why, and move on rather than waiting for leadership's preference. ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Why travel fits Facebook's mission and assets, and one clear goal for the product. - Traveler segments, and travel businesses if in scope, with a reasoned choice of whom to serve first. - Pain points across the trip, from choosing where to go to sharing it afterward, tied to what Facebook is uniquely placed to solve. - A prioritized set of solutions with a defined first release and a build-or-partner decision on booking. - A success metric with guardrails on privacy, notification load and the quality of the core Facebook experience. ### Follow-up Questions - Most people take only a few trips a year. How would you keep the product relevant between trips? - Showing people where their friends have traveled can expose information those friends did not expect to be reused. How would you handle that? - If leadership wanted the product to become a meaningful revenue source quickly, what would you change in your plan? - Suppose the brief were instead a vacation experience that does not have to sit on Facebook or any other Meta app, with the platform left to you. Would you build it inside Meta's apps or as a standalone product, and how would you defend that choice?