Design Facebook for the travel industry.

Clarifying questions to the interviewer:

1) Why is Facebook getting into the Travel Industry? What is the goal? 

Assuming, Since covid is settling down and a lot of people are back to traveling, Facebook would like to explore an opportunity in the travel space.  The interviewer could post other reasons as well.

2) Is this for FB mobile app or web or both? Assuming both

3) Is this a new product or are we going to integrate this with Facebook? Assuming here that we can leverage facebook's social graph like friends and connections and it would be a good idea to integrate with Facebook product. 

4) What do you mean by travel industry - I am assuming this to be a kind of a feature which helps you plan trips, and itineraries for vacations and also helps to look out for hotels and tourist places nearby.  - Yes that's correct

5) Do we have any constraints w.r.t timelines, resources, or investment? etc - Yes 1 year

FB’s mission is to create products to connect people and build a community, and helping users to plan a vacation or trip together seems to overall fit this theme. 

User Groups: 

1) Group Travel: Group hangouts travels where close friends plan a vacation say on weekends, etc

2) Solo Traveler: One who plans his/her own trip 

3) Couples/Partners: Newly married couples, existing couples, partners who would like to plan their vacation, couple trips, Honeymoon, etc

Since I have to pick one, I will go ahead with designing a solution for 1) considering the time limit

User Pain Points: 

1) Deciding on the destination, Agreeing to destination(s) between friends. 

2) Deciding on a Hotel, Reserving a hotel, etc

3) Deciding on a mode of transportation based on the destination

4) Weather conditions for the selected itinerary which would help one decide on clothes, food, etc

5) Budget for travel per person

6) Managing a trip status - Starting a trip, completing a trip, reviews, Sharing moments, etc

7) Travel safety 

If I have to prioritize the pain points, I would focus first on 1) 2),6) & 7) in MVP due to time constraints and then focus on other aspects like transportation, weather, budgeting, etc. These three points can be accessed via other third-party tools for now

Solutions: 

Planning Travel, Destinations, etc :

 a) Facebook can come up with a similar feature to FB "Groups" called "Travel". The user can then create a Travel Instance and then it further presents with following forms, points

- Add friends into travel planning

- Allow friends to commit their status for travel - Like Accept, Decline, Tentative, etc

- Create an itinerary with start and end dates and destinations 

- Ability to edit itinerary, change dates, comment on this travel post

Once the itinerary is created, Facebook can use some AI/ML programs to provide hotels and tourist attractions based on other travel posts which are recently posted, reviews, and comments from other FB friends/contacts  

User Impact: High

Effort: Medium

Priority: High

b) Provide a virtual reality "VR" kind of feature which would allow friends or individuals to travel the virtual world with a VR headset paired with an app. This can be another feature that can be built in case there are travel budget constraints, last-minute drop-outs from travel, etc

User Impact: Medium

Effort: High

Prio: Low

Deciding on a Hotel, Reserving a hotel :

Based on the itinerary, Hotels & Villas can be suggested for stays

Further, Facebook can partner with some prominent hotel bookers like booking.com, Agoda, etc to help reserve the hotel for selected dates. This should also drive Facebook revenue with help of Hotel Booking ads.

Building a hotel booking feature E2E from scratch would need a lot of time, cost, and investment for Facebook and since there are already some prominent hotel booking sites, we chose to use this option of integrating/partnering with their services 

User Impact: High

Effort: Medium

Priority: High

Managing a trip status - Starting a trip, completing a trip, reviews, Sharing moments, etc  

Facebook can have features to :

- Start a trip when the trip physically gets underway. the user can just tap on the start

- Ability to add photos to a trip from any device like a Mobile camera, and also the ability to upload images of trips

- Sharing trips with other friends or users on Facebook. Also ensuring the privacy of trips like the ability to share to selected friends, or friends of friends or public, custom selections, etc

- After sharing trips with selected users, they can like, and comment on the travel pics (already built in Facebook)

User Impact: High

Effort: Low

Priority: High

Travel Safety  

For any travel, safety is of utmost priority. Travelers need safety mechanisms in place for travel like travel insurance, Nearby Hospital contacts, etc

- Show prominent travel insurance companies on the travel planning page during itinerary setup. This should also help drive revenue via ads of prominent insurance companies

- Show nearby hospitals and contacts in a block on the travel planning page along with contacts. This is helpful for any medical emergency situations

User Impact: High

Effort: Low

Priority: High

Metrics:

1) Number of users using this new travel feature post-launch

2) DAU, WAU, MAU 

To summarize, we clarified the scope of the travel industry problem and planned to build a user-friendly and intuitive feature similar to Facebook groups where a group of friends can get together and jot down an itinerary for a trip and reserve a hotel for their stay. We also took care of some of the safety features like insurance, hospital contacts, etc