Our Goal
Over the span of 10 weeks, my group and I with the help of the Airbnb’s Budget Travelers team, were tasked to better understand visitors who seek budget/value accommodations. With Airbnb slowly transitioning to more affluent customers through programs such as Airbnb Luxury Resorts and Airbnb Plus, it is still important to cater to travelers who are less likely to use these services due to their current spending limit. Therefore, our main goal was to help create a solution that would help Airbnb continue to provide affordable accommodations and to give budget travelers the best possible options through this solution.

My Role
Throughout this project, I took on the task conducting field work by helping create surveys, blueprints, storyboarding the process of our platform and front end UI design.

Length of Project
January 2019 - March 2019

Tools used:
Adobe XD | Photoshop | Final Cut Pro

Initial Research
In order to tackle this problem, we first had to understand what a ‘budget traveller’ is. We asked ourselves:

• Who are traveling on a budget (budget traveler/young traveler/millennial traveler)?
• What do they look for when deciding where to book and why?
• How can we make the experience better for budget travelers?

Using these leading questions, we created a survey to begin acquiring quantifiable data and have a better understanding of our target audience for our solution. Our survey gave us an insight on the age group, what this group considered budget traveling, specific values when booking, etc.

After surveying 32 people, some key takeaway points we took were that majority of college students fell under the ‘budget travelers’ category. The student traveler process could also be broken down into 3 key points:

• Compare: comparing different housing accommodations to find the option which they felt would fit their needs but also fall within their budget range

• Compromise: willing to sacrifice price for certain commodities such as comfort, location, and safety

• Purchase: finally booking after exhausting all their options and feeling confident that they have found the best booking based on their needs and cost

The biggest finding that we thought was important to highlight was that over 40% of student travelers were spending over 5+ hours searching for lodging.

Further Research
After conducting individual interviews with 9 people, our understanding of the key points made in the initial research were much more clear. For one, the ability to explore the area they will stay in on their own plays a role when comparing places they will be staying at. In terms of compromising, safety and privacy within the place they will be staying is a huge factor. Unsurprisingly, though, the price is still the ultimate deciding factor as we had expected.

Service Blueprint

Stakeholder

Storyboarding: Chatbox

Storyboarding: microloans

Storyboarding: Selective

Prototyping & User Feedback
The feedback our group received from the Airbnb’s Budget Traveler Team and other students after we presented our deliverables were a crucial part of developing the actual Airbnb Student. The Airbnb Student platform service offers student discounts, streamlined searching, and an easy checkout process.

Final Product
After ten weeks of researching, ideating, user testing and multiple iteration, we were able to design ‘Airbnb Student’ and pitched the idea to the Airbnb Budget Traveler team along with several other Airbnb executives. The platform received very positive reactions and our research along with the prototype was passed down to the Budget Traveler team for further observations.