TL;DR: A product case study where I solve a problem statement of 'Vacation & Trip Planning' for Airbnb by making a minimum-viable product (MVP)

Context

Airbnb started from bedrooms but has now expanded into multiple things around travel. You can:

Problem Statement

But there is one important piece still missing. A huge market just waiting to be captured. And that is “vacation & trip planning”. Before a customer books an adventure, or a stay, they plan the vacation.

  • Which country should we go to? Which cities in that country?

  • For how many days? How much will it cost?

  • What activities should we do there, and when?

  • What about visas? Language issues?

The customer’s worries, and anxieties are endless! And on top of that, each trip to the same place is different based on the occasion:

  • “I am travelling with a baby!”

  • “This is my honeymoon”

  • “Bachelors trip woohoo!”

📢 What is the MVP of a product that solves these problems and helps Airbnb take the first step into the market of “vacation and trip planning”?

🚨 This was part of Stoa’s Case Weekend. I along with my team members worked on this and below is the solution and the steps involved.

Contents

  • User Persona

  • Jobs to be Done

  • Ideas explored

  • MVP Features

  • Feature Selection

  • What will happen? (Transformation)

  • Feature Walkthrough

  • Metrics

  • Refereces

1. 🧑🏽‍💻User Persona

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPPENK2w=/?share_link_id=120762730982

✨ Click on the miro board and drag and resize to look into Imraan’s actions, motivations and pains in detail.

2. 📚 Jobs to be Done

  • Choose the destination - based on available dates, appropriate season, and budget constraints.

  • Plan the itinerary - i.e. What to do and when to do including places visit, food and experiences to try

  • Identify the best accommodation to complement the itinerary

  • Organize logistics for the entire trip and optimize the transit time

3. 💡Ideas Explored

  • A quick guide to the best season and ideal number of days to stay at a destination.

  • Removal of random locations from the landing page, as they confuse the user and are irrelevant.

  • An improved form of FishBowl with filtered rants on location, stay, food, experiences etc. with tags such as must try/ nice to try/ avoid.

  • Multi-participant collaborative itinerary planning module with the ability to invite participants to edit/ comment.

  • As a suggestion section, hotspots nearby and highlights are recommended based on property selected.

  • A module on “Airbnb Vacation & Planning” - a curated list of must visit destination and ideal season and days required, along with the budget.

  • Tips on the best transit option to the location, as well as best way to explore the local attraction.

4. 🏋🏽‍♀️MVP Features

Airbnb’s “Plan Your Experience” has the following features to solve Imraan’s pain points:

  • Plan your whole vacation from a single click of button.

  • Places of attraction, nearby Airbnb experiences, recommended no. of days to spend in a city.

  • Transit options, weather in that city, informal map displaying hotspot of eateries, local gigs, sightseeing.

  • Option to modify or make your own itinerary.

  • Option to invite your trip buddies to edit/add your itinerary.

5. 🪝Feature Selection

Made use of RICE scoring model and MoSCoW prioritization framework for finalizing the essential features.

RICE scoring model:

RICE_framework.png

MoSCoW framework:

Moscow_framework.png

6. 💪🏼 Transformation (What will happen?)

  • The “Plan Your Experience” tab is a simple nudge to provide seamless trip planning experience.

  • User will enter their choice of location along with dates.

  • This displays a primary itinerary suggested by Airbnb.

  • Two main things to do - Things to Do & Places to Stay At.

  • User can continue to stick to the primary itinerary provided or can choose to modify it by adding new places to make a personalized itinerary.

  • Users also can refer to the hotspots map highlighting nearby places of interest.

📝 We have added new features that will assist Imraan in planning and curating his trip, which will include the stay, places to visit, things to try that match his taste and schedule. This will suggest the ideal flow and templates for him to edit and play with if any changes need to be made.

Additionally, it is designed to accommodate the fact that he and his friends are too busy to read multiple blog posts online, to decide on the ideal number of days required, the ideal itinerary and what should be avoided. It makes his journey from planning to booking easier and more fun without wasting time.

7. 👣 Feature Walkthrough

Below are the two images showing mockups when “Plan your experience” is integrated. Also, a map is also added. “Hoodmap” can also be integrated displaying informal tags to popular places.

mvp_1_airbnb.png

mvp_2_airbnb.png

hoodmaps_airbnb_goa.png

8. 🔢 Metrics

metrics_airbnb.png

9. References

  1. https://uxdesign.cc/airbnb-vacation-seamless-trip-planning-done-right-1795e1aa9fb8 - A great article by Hardik Pandya, Design Head at Unacademy.