Airbnb Product Manager Mock Interview: Increase Airbnb Bookings

Watch Phil Ou (Product Manager, Google) walk through a product manager mock interview question at Airbnb. How would you increase Airbnb bookings? This strategy question comes up frequently in PM interviews. Phil walks through understanding what value Airbnb provides to customers and how to increase bookings without impacting that value.

Chapters -
00:00 - Introduction
01:08 - Question
01:30 - Clarifying questions
03:14 - Answer
05:46 - Mission
06:47 - Metrics
08:40 - Types of users
20:35 - Potential features
25:33 - Go-to-market strategy
28:17 - Interview analysis

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[nsubugakasozi]

Its nice to see that even real world product managers are never sure of their answers when interviewing

[LWarrenF]

Remember to use the word ‘awesome’ in your PM interview and you’ll do just fine.

[whattimeisitnow]

This is how I would approach this in summary:
1. Define the business outcomes: increase return customers, increase net new customers, more nights booked in the same booking for example

2. Pick one of the above: Let's say increase return customers

3. Now map out the opportunity space in the shape of problems (this could be done by user segment):
Not having enough days off in a year, too expensive, poor past experience, too hard to book, not enough options or any other problem that we are able to extract from existing data such as user reviews.

4. Assess the problem space with data: Gather data from existing sources. What patterns do we see in existing customers that constantly rebook vs others. What kind of patterns are we seeing. For each of the problems above what kind of evidence can we gather from the data above to see which ones to prioritize for testing.

5. Based on the analysis above you produce a few tests. For example if the problem of not enough days off is big enough generally a hypothesis could be do introduce workation options. One experiment could be to tag locations that are suitable for workation such as high speed net, dual monitor and desk, chair etc. Near amenities (tag as Workation certified). Do A/B test to see if locations with this tag have higher booking or not in a few weeks.

[kranthikumar]

AirBnB can increase bookings by many ways like :
Are we looking to increase bookings by expansion to new cities?

Are we looking for new users?

Are we looking for repeat users?

Are we looking for churned users?

Are we looking to double tap on cart abandoned users?

Probably the last user segment will give some quick wins for getting more bookings, as its difficult to get users on ToFu and then get them to complete funnel

[mmscorpio]

Love this interview. interviewer is just blunt and straight forward, which is how normally it is. I like how the interviewee asked these questions and in parellel was thinking about the solutions.

[pgcorpo]

This actually was all over the place.. Also, the interviewee changed his approach every time he was pushed by the interviewer.

[missbae_]

This video reassures me that my knack for getting to the point will serve me will…this was wayyyy too draw out. I promise the recruiter would’ve zoned out in the first 7 minutes lol

[rosemo]

I could feel that tension during the halfway then I was picturing myself as part of this. This is definitely a good study material as you can see how a PM structures the strategy and approaches down

[compound]

This was a great strategy question, here are some of the things I really liked from Phil's answers:

1. Revisiting the core mission and ethos of Airbnb before arriving at a North-Star metric or a solution. Thus keeping things in perspective.

2. Being flexible and open to feedback that the north star metric he arrived at might not be accurate.
( @06:48 Going from Annual bookings per user per year to the Number of nights per user per year)

3. Stating the different kinds of user segmentation and why he chose to work with Leisure and low-intent travelers. (This is important as it shows that there might be instances on the job where one has to work within certain constraints, here it was not having access to the data team.)

4. Potential Features: Scoping further might give the answer to the jobs-to-be-done framework.

5. A simple go-to-market strategy that targets inactive users: Teasing the idea of the Explore/Browsing section of the application, measuring the engagement of the newsletter, and so on.

[habeebkhan]

Mhaan!! the guy had a sigh of relief when the interview ended. Seems like this is a pressure test interview and put him right on spot. I don't know if I will be able to handle so much for almost 5 rounds.

[ravigahlla]

This is a great interview example, very relatable reasoning by the Product Manager, as someone who has practiced mock interviews a lot

[amarkanday]

Started off well, really liked that he explained his thought process with steps. I think there was a miss in not spending enough time on the conversion funnel (Acquire, Engage, Monetize), and the user journey. Moderator did a good job with challenging assumptions and the PM was calm and composed.

[alexeyhimself]

I am surprised that a "direct talk to the customers" was never an option for the interviewee. No data analytics too. Even at the end when I heard some chance on contacting people I've heard only a marketing email to reach the target group. But I'd wanted to have an in person access to those who didn't made or didn't finish their bookings to talk to some of them (30-60 customers should be fine to start with) to find out the reasons why they didn't finish their bookings -- and improve on that, while continue to stay in a contact with those customers to validate our solutions we'll iteratively bring to test how good we solve their problem.

[sionchoimariscal]

Loved how poised the interviewee was throughout and how neatly he structured every step of his thought process. 16:30 - especially liked the notion of changing the interaction model for low intent travelers. It reminded me of how I recently visited Barcelona and, wanting to venture off the beaten path and out of the city for a few days, used Airbnb to discover beautiful homes / experiences along Costa Brava without a specific city in mind. Was initially undecided if I would even do this (low intent) and even if i did, undecided between hotel vs Airbnb (medium intent?), but I ultimately curated my trip around the Airbnb I found in a small beach town - one that I wouldn’t have known to search for had I not found the listing. But not everyone gets as creative as me :P so bringing that kind of travel discovery and inspiration more front and center to increase engagement with leisure travelers is a fun idea. Thanks for sharing this great interview!

[teacmrocks]

I jumped to this from eng sys design interviews in a playlist so as I was working on something and listening, I thought, "man he's spending so much time talking about managerial details". Then I looked at this screen and saw "product manager". Ok, that makes sense.

[shivalishinde]

User expansion.
Majority of the users are concerned of the safety in apartments/bungalows. It would be good to have conversations enabled on the airbnb app on the reviews posted by previous customers. This increases user engagement with the app. This user induced conversation acts as hook to visit the app.

[davidefiumano]

Great mock!
I would have asked since the beginning the reason why they want to increase bookings, because the assumption of nights per user per year can be tricky as the booking value is also the metric to look at. And as you want to increase nights per user I would have chosen a target user who usually book longer stays like remote workers or family/group accommodations. I would have suggested to introduce a loyalty program to encourage these targets to book longer stays.

[jayix]

This guy's good. I like his constructive and highly engaging way to comminucate.

[jatinnagpal]

Great interview. Well very structured approach by Phil and good feedback at the end from Kevin. Thanks Team Exponent!

[harshilguptaa]

The most honest interview ever seen :)