Doreen Zhao



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Airbnb

UXUI, product design, mobile


Team: Doreen Zhao, Briana Tran
Completed under the guidance of: Amy Lima, Preeti Kohli, Shane Wickramasuriya

The problem: Airbnb lacks functionality for people who are planning group trips. Currently, only individuals can book stays, and are responsible for the full payment themselves. 

A major part of Airbnb’s user base has booked or will book a stay for a group of 3 or more. Lacking features to improve group booking experiences drives customers to use competitors’ products. Adding more group functionality inside the Airbnb app, including a way to split payments, can make users’ experience booking an Airbnb for group trips easier, and incentivizes users to use the Airbnb app more instead of other competitors’.





We conducted surveys to discover more about users’ experiences with Airbnb, especially for group trips. We then used Dovetail to synthesize the data and find some common themes, mainly falling under the buckets of: general experiences with Airbnb, group booking needs, splitting expenses, and wishes for new features and improvements.





We discovered a few crucial pain points:

The process of splitting the cost of a stay can be cumbersome - users have to download another app to split payments
Lack of accountability can be frustrating - people “don’t remember” to pay their share, and repayments can get lost in the shuffle
There’s a lack of flexibility - group trips can have many factors that Airbnb doesn’t account for            

We also kept a few considerations in mind when beginning to think about designing the group booking feature:

There are concerns over shared responsibility - it may be a problem if some members pay and some don’t, losing the reservation
Need to consider the hosts - hosts are key to Airbnb’s product, and splitting payments for reservations could potentially create problems that make them unhappy
Many potential improvements - splitting the cost is only one part of a group trip, and users are also craving more functionality for planning and communication



→  Mid-fidelity wireframes
With the new group booking feature, users can create a group during the reservation process.  They can name the group and add members through contacts.  They then have the option to split the payment with the added group members.  Completing the split payment holds the reservation for 24 hours, in which time the other group members must confirm and add their payment to secure the reservation. This allows for flexibility and removes the burden of having to pay the full reservation price at once, while ensuring that hosts don’t lose too much by having their listings pending for too long.

A MVP rollout of this feature would keep things simple by defaulting to a equal split amongst group members, but future additions would include uneven split options. This could be useful for situations where, for example, group members are not staying the same number of nights, or if families are traveling together.




→  Making a group booking with split payment feature
Group trip and split payment details can be checked under the “Trips” tab. The booker has the option to view their receipt and remind other group members to complete their payment. Additional features could include ways to plan the trip together, with spaces for itinerary notes and voting on options.




→  Group trip details under the Trips tab



→  Reserving a group trip - link to full prototype




→  Email or Airbnb app notifications for invited group members




→  Group details view for invited members



→  Invited to a group trip - link to full prototype