Oyo budget hotels: a product plan to reduce churn and drive repeat use

You are a product manager at Oyo Rooms, the budget hotel booking brand, and your task is to increase retention. Define what retention should mean for this product, work out why people stop using it, choose whom to focus on, then propose, prioritize and measure your changes. ```hint Diagnose first Before naming any feature, decide which data on first-time and lapsed users would tell you why they did not come back, and walk one stay from search to checkout to see where the experience can break. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Does retention here mean guests making repeat bookings, or hotel owners staying on the platform? Both sides can churn. - Most people travel only a few times a year: what counts as retained, and over what window? - Which guests and markets matter most: budget travelers within India, travelers on company accounts, or international markets? - Is the bigger problem first-time guests who never return, or regular guests who have stopped booking? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A definition of retention that fits how often people travel, and a stated choice of which side of the marketplace to focus on - A diagnosis of why users leave, grounded in the data you would examine, before any solution - User segments compared, with one chosen and the reason - Solutions drawn from that segment's journey and prioritized against explicit criteria, including which parts of the experience the platform controls and which the property owner controls - A primary retention metric with guardrails, and the main risks ### Follow-up Questions - If a loyalty discount raised repeat bookings but each booking now lost money, what would you do? - How would you hold hotel owners to the standard guests are promised without driving good owners off the platform? - How would you tell a guest who churned from one who simply has not traveled since?