Product Strategy to Grow Completed Stays on Airbnb's Marketplace

You are a product manager at Airbnb. How would you grow the number of bookings? ```hint Find where bookings are lost A booking needs a guest who wants a trip and a host whose listing fits it. Before proposing a feature, decide which group you are serving and at which step their trips fail to become stays today. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Should success count reservations made, or only stays that are completed without a cancellation? - Is the goal global, or should I focus on one market or trip type, such as domestic weekend getaways or month-long stays? - Do Experiences count as bookings here, or only stays? - Which constraints must hold while bookings grow: host earnings, guest fees, or profit per booking? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A precise goal (what counts as a booking, over what horizon) and a view on whether demand, supply or matching limits bookings today - A justified choice of guest or host segment and the step in its journey where trips are lost - Two or three solutions aimed at that step, prioritized by likely incremental bookings, effort and marketplace risk - A primary metric for incremental completed bookings, with guardrails for hosts, guests and cancellations - Risks such as shifting bookings that would have happened anyway, and an experiment design that can tell the difference ### Follow-up Questions - How would you show that the bookings your idea produces are incremental rather than moved over from the normal search flow? - If bookings rose but host cancellations and declined requests rose with them, what would you change? - Suppose the data showed guests leaving because searches in popular markets return too few available listings. Which lever would you switch to, and why?