Background
Airbnb wants to be the one stop shop for booking vacation getaways from a based model also knows as a . This allows for fast and convenient getaways for travelers for various vacation reasons and even business travel.
Renters can rent a vacation home from Homeowners easily, and in general, for a much more affordable price for both vacation getaways and business travel when compared to popular digital travel agencies like or
Product Evaluation
Before we dive into areas of improvements and possible solutions, it’ll be important to evaluate the product in various categories in order to get a sense of strengths and weaknesses:
Product Evaluation Scorecard
Search
Customer
Meaningful Problem To Solve? Absolutely, disrupting the vacation industry from a peer-peer economic- based model is makes it appealing to any adult traveler
Product
Differentiators? Offers ‘Experiences’ both online and in-person to help expand upon the ‘Places to Stay’ area for which Airbnb is known for
Finances and Revenue
Total Funding: 1 billion
Market Share
Estimated Market Share of Vacation Rentals: ~20%
Competition
Booking.com: Recently released a ‘Homestays’ section
Partnerships
Local States & Government: Partners with states and local governments to help promote tourism recovery from the COIVD-19 pandemic
Improvement Areas
Transportation: Non-existent which is a key component for any vacation or business trip
Area
Customer
Criterion 1
Meaningful Problem To Solve? Absolutely, disrupting the vacation industry from a peer-peer economic- based model is makes it appealing to any adult traveler
Criterion 2
Segmentable Market? Yes, whether it be by demographic, age or traveling trends. 60% of bookings in 2020 were from millennials, just as an example. Most of the Renters on Airbnb, are young millennials that usually travel in pairs of 2-4 person groups.
Criterion 3
Customer Accessibility: Any customer can easily sign-up as a renter and begin to search for their getaway. Furthermore, the homeowner signup process to induce an easy-to-setup peer-peer model can be done within minutes as well
Criterion 4
Customer Loyalty: 32 NPS via https://www.comparably.com/brands/airbnb#nps
Overall Score
Summary
Overall the takeaways from Airbnb are that it is a strong product and has an extremely large presence, as well as market share, of the vacation housing rental. Though there aren’t noticeable large problems within the business itself, there are some shorter-term strategies that could be applied, which we will dive into below.
Problem Areas
A Key Part of The Renter Journey That Needs to Be Addressed
As the infamous 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic comes to a close, one of the key areas that people around the world are starting to see a spike in, is travel. As the #1 home rental platform, Airbnb’s traffic and home rentals are beginning to rise again, which reintroduces a common vision that has yet to be solved for the business:
‘When going on vacation, Airbnb Renters shouldn’t have to worry about transportation, so that they can enjoy their vacation knowing that they have the means to explore.’
A common misconception is for someone to purchase a rental car, but if you closely look at the journey of renting a car it may seem easy, but in reality, can be a nightmare. Such issues can include:
Additionally, as Airbnb sees heavy utilization into in-person and its offerings, Renters may want to have travel accommodations to those events as well.
Considerations & Questions
Stakeholder Group
Item to Validate
1
XD/Prod
From a UX perspective, would introducing this experience introduce any friction to the current booking experience?
User research will be needed to validate this is a problem to solve for and the right solution to address it for both renter and homeowner.
Competitively, what to companies like Vacasa or VRBO do to address this potential problem/need?
2
Engineering
Can we leverage our existing homeowner experience to upload a homeowner’s car and details to reduce effort?
3
Legal
What legal implications (insurance, liability, ToS) do we have to account for? Is this even doable?
4
Data Science
How many Airbnb renters purchase experiences driving distance (> 1 mile) with their Airbnb home rental? Where do these purchases occur (city vs rural)?
5
Product Support
How many of our users ask for this some kind of transportation service as an improvement/enhancement request from both renters and homeowners?
There are no rows in this table
What Data is Available to Us? What Data Do We Need?
Solution Alignment
Key Features
Below, we will outline the high level experiences that we will want to introduce in a phased approach in terms of the ‘Adding a Ride’ initiative. This will be done in phases over a 3-6 month time-boxed period. A key goal here is to maximize our booking/service fee with minimal development costs and amount of effort on our part in order to reduce/maximize the following:
Phase 1: Renters can rent a Homeowner's Vehicle for Places to Stay
Phase 2: Uber Integration for Experiences
Phase 3: Rental Care Integration for Places to Stay
Add a Ride Goals
Our goals within the first 3 months for Add a Ride are as follows:
Metrics for Success
Metric
What does it measure
Related OKR
1
Increase MRR by 10%
Airbnb’s Monthly Recurring Revenue. By increasing the standard fee rate for both the homeowner and renter by 1.5% we should see enough revenue to hit 10% mark.
Sales:
Objective: Increase MRR for the Airbnb platform
Key Result: Increase the MRR by 10% overall for the Airbnb platform for Q4
2
At least 20% of Airbnb Homeowners have added a personal vehicle
Feature adoption - we want to make sure the feature is adopted by homeowners, and in turn renters
Product:
Objective: Add more value for homeowners to increase retention
Key Result: Increase Homeowner Activation metric by 3%
3
There have been at least 1000 Add a Ride add-ons purchased by renters
Feature adoption - measures how many times add-ons were actually purchased in combination with an Airbnb
Product:
Objective: Add more value for Renters to increase retention
Key Result: Increase Renters Activation metric by 5%
4
Renter NPS increases by 15
Brand/Loyalty
Product:
Objective: Increase Brand and Loyalty to Airbnb for Renters
Key Result: Increase Renter NPS by 20 points by end of year
5
Homeowner NPS increases by 20
Brand/Loyalty
Product:
Objective: Increase Brand and Loyalty to Airbnb for Homeowners
Key Result: Increase Homeowner NPS by 20 points by end of year
6
Average increase in passive income for the owner
Brand/Loyalty
Product:
Objective: Increase Brand and Loyalty to Airbnb for Homeowners
Key Result: Increase Homeowner NPS by 20 points by end of year
7
Support calls around this feature are 10% below the current average
Quality/Support
Support Heroes:
Objective: Reduce the average time to resolution for an open case
Key Result: Increase the time to resolution for open cases by 10% by Q4
8
# of bugs deemed as severe/critical is below 10, within a month of launch after each major feature
Quality
Engineering:
Objective: Reduce the amount of bugs for net new features introduced
Key Result: Decrease the amount of development allocated of Critical Issues by 10% in Q4
There are no rows in this table
Key Flows
Epics Tied to OKRs
Launch Phase 1 for Add a Ride - Homeowner’s VehicleIncrease MRR by 10%
Renter can rent vehicle
Closed Beta in select cities
Support Hero Training
GA Launch
1000 Homeowner vehicles have been rentedUpdates to payment and confirmation screens
20% of Homeowners have added a vehicleHomeowner can add a vehicle
Marketing to Homeowners about new feature
Airbnb NPS grows by 10 pointsImplement Qualtrics Survey during Beta and GA launch
Launch Phase 2 for Add a Ride - Uber IntegrationLaunch Phase 3 for Add a Ride - Car RetnalsJun 2023
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Nov 2023
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Launch Phase 2 for Add a Ride - Uber Integration7
Launch Phase 3 for Add a Ride - Car Retnals7
Month
TodayFit
Strategy and Economics
How does Adding a Vehicle feature improve the Business?
TL;DR
Cited from:
Resources:
Dependencies & Considerations
Technical
Legal
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