Six-Month Airbnb Roadmap: Choosing a Guest or Host Problem and Measuring Impact

You are a product manager at Airbnb, and you have a six-month window to make the product better. What would you improve, and how? Explain the goal you would pursue, the users and problems you would focus on, the improvements you would ship, how you would prioritize and sequence them within the six months, and how you would measure success. ```hint Let the window shape the scope Six months is too short to rebuild the marketplace. Choose one side of it and one stage of the trip, from search through the stay, where a clear problem can be fixed and its effect measured inside the window. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is there a goal leadership wants moved, such as bookings, host retention or guest trust, or is choosing it part of the exercise? - Should I focus on guests, on hosts, or on the balance between them? - Is the improvement global, or meant for a particular market? - Does six months mean the improvements must ship within the window, or that they must show measurable results within it? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A goal tied to Airbnb's two-sided marketplace, with a reason it matters more than the alternatives right now - A focused user group and trip stage with specific, ranked pain points - Improvements prioritized by impact, effort and confidence, sequenced into a plan that realistically fits six months - A primary metric with guardrails that protect the other side of the marketplace - Risks and dependencies such as host adoption, abuse of new features, and outcomes that take longer than six months to appear ### Follow-up Questions - Your top improvement lifts guest satisfaction, but hosts say it adds work and costs them bookings. What do you do? - If engineering capacity turned out to be half of what you planned, what would you cut first? - How would you know at the end of month two whether the plan is on track?