Improving an Online Travel Agency's Itinerary Organizer App to Lead a Crowded Market
Company: Airbnb
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Trip organizer apps such as TripIt, TripCase, CheckMyTrip and App in the Air compete in a crowded market. One existing player, an online travel agency, wants to take the lead in this market by growing user engagement and, eventually, revenue. Keep in mind that Google recently retired its own trip-planning mobile app and folded its features into other apps, such as Maps for navigation, most likely because it did not see the app reaching billions of users.
As the product manager, how would you improve the agency's trip organizer app?
```hint Lay out the traveler's year
Sketch both a typical traveler's year and the timeline of a single trip, and mark when an organizer is genuinely needed. Use that picture to decide what kind of engagement is realistic before you pick features.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Does the agency's organizer hold only trips booked through the agency, or can it also import bookings made elsewhere?
- Which travelers matter most to the agency today: business travelers, leisure travelers, or both?
- How does the organizer make money now: booking commissions, a paid tier, advertising, or none of these?
- Is the aim to lead in particular regions first, or globally from the start?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- What dominance and engagement should mean for a trip organizer, informed by why Google folded its trip app into other products
- Traveler segments compared, with one chosen and the reason
- Pain points across the trip lifecycle, from planning through the return home
- Improvements prioritized by impact, effort and how well they use the agency's own strengths, with a path from engagement to revenue
- A primary metric with guardrails, and the main risks
### Follow-up Questions
- How would you get travelers who book elsewhere to keep their whole trip in your app?
- Should the app try to be useful between trips at all? What would you build if so?
- If a large platform bundles trip organizing into its maps or email product for free, how do you stay ahead?
Overview: A product improvement question about the trip organizer app of an online travel agency that wants to lead a crowded category and grow engagement and revenue. It tests segment choice, pain points across the trip lifecycle, prioritized improvements, success metrics, and what Google folding its own trip app into other products implies.