Market-Sizing Expedia's Worldwide Hotel Reservations per Year

Estimate how many hotel reservations travelers make on Expedia worldwide in one year, and talk the interviewer through your reasoning. ```hint Bound it before you slice it Find a total you can reason about with confidence before estimating Expedia's share of it, and settle what a single booking is before doing any arithmetic. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Does a booking mean one reservation or one room night? A three-night stay in two rooms is one reservation but six room nights. - Is the scope the Expedia brand alone or all of Expedia Group, including sister brands such as Hotels.com, and do vacation rentals count as hotels? - Should reservations that are cancelled before the stay count, or only stays that actually take place? - Do reservations made on partner websites that sell Expedia's hotel inventory under their own name count as made on Expedia? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A definition of the unit being counted and of Expedia's scope, settled before any numbers appear. - An equation that narrows from total hotel demand or supply to the share sold through online travel agencies and then to Expedia, with every factor labeled as an assumption. - Recognition that Expedia's market position differs by region, and how that changes the share applied. - Clean arithmetic with round numbers, ending in a point estimate and a plausible range. - A sanity check through an independent second path, including a test that Expedia's figure stays well below the whole market. ### Follow-up Questions - Which single assumption moves your answer the most, and how would you narrow it with a day of research? - How would you turn your booking estimate into an estimate of Expedia's yearly hotel revenue? - How would the estimate change in a year when international travel drops sharply?