AIRBNB-FRIENDLY APARTMENTS
Rent a place to live. Earn money hosting part-time.
The affordabiity crisis for renters in the US continues to worsen, particularly in urban markets.
/ CONTEXT + PROBLEM
Affordable housing is a known issue across the United States, but particularly in more dense urban areas. Supply constraints continue to drive up housing costs, while stagnation in wage growth makes it difficult for prospective renters to find the home that best suits their needs, and aligns with their financial goals.
49% of all renters are cost-burdened by their housing expense, worsening the most for middle-income renters - and this number continues to grow.
*cost-burdened includes all households that spend 30% or more of their income on housing
Airbnb saw an opportunity to partner with the largest apartment providers in the US to unlock the economic benefits of hosting for renters.
But Airbnb never supported this type of inventory or host on its platform. A typical search yields mostly single-family homes or condos and a primary host who is the owner of the home.
/ CHALLENGES
Creating strategic partnerships with apartment and condo building operators provides Airbnb an opportunity to diversify its supply portfolio and build a new marketplace focused solely on propsective renters and enpowring them to achieve new ewconomic benefits.

Integrating these buildng portfolios presented a challenge, as each operator uses a unique set of tools their manage their building data. There was no simple integration to create a listing on Airbnb. We needed to be able to access, store, and structure the data in a way that could communicate with Airbnb platform tools.
TRANSLATE RAW DATA
Before we could launch a new marketplace for renters...

We needed access to raw data from external property management systems to create building listings and present it in a meaningful way on Airbnb.

This contained attributes such as location data, amenities, photos, building policies, guest resources, and pricing and availability data.
*most building owners and managers use Yardi, Entrata, or RealPage to manage their data
BUILD A NEW DATA MODEL
As a foundation, we designed a new data model to curate and manage how someone interacts with a building.

This became the centerpiece of our back-end operations to launch and maintain the building inventory, and would inform the workflows our team uses.
ADAPT TO OUR STAKEHOLDERS
Our stakeholder group was diverse with constantly evolving requirements - presenting a variable set of use cases and challenges.

The feature requests were difficult to anticipate as there were many variables and unknowns impacting how the tool would be used and the type of influence our building partners would have on their inventory.
Operations
These are the primary users. Core tasks include:
- Creating new buildings
- Curating photos and amenities
- QA of all building data before listing is published
Business Development
Our business development team used the tools in more specified ways:
- Manage the data source for a building
- Add/remove a building from the marketplace
- Modify user permissions
Engineering
Engineering played the role of troubleshooting and debugging.
- Apply attributes if not supported by current settings
- Manage the data source for a building
- Investigate front-end bugs in the marketplace
/ APPROACH & OUTCOMES
A more recent summary of companies where I've spent time building products for and learning as a designer. Each has informed me as a designer, collaborator, and problem-solver in different ways. I've been fortnate enough to work in a diverse set of environments enabling me to own UX design, interaction design, research, and product strategy.
We grounded our workflows in four design principles, as the user and business requirements constantly evolved.
Intentional
We provide contextual awareness and clarity in all interactions with the tools.
Scalable
We are flexible and adaptable to meet changing needs and business landscapes.
Intelligent
We support our users through automation, responsive feedback, and targeted guidance.
Empowering
We manage complexity and elevate the proficiency of all users.
INVENTORY INTEGRATIONS
The data feeds are what drive the marketplace inventory and building listings. Our team needs transparency into the data, its source, and its status.
- Review and manage current feeds associated with a building
- Search for feed records and review their source, identifiers, status, and last data sync
- Add/remove feeds from a building
MARKETPLACE PROGRAM SETTINGS
The data feeds are what drive the marketplace inventory and building listings. Our team needs transparency into the data, its source, and its status.
- Review and manage current feeds associated with a building
- Search for feed records and review their source, identifiers, status, and last data sync
- Add/remove feeds from a building
PHOTO MANAGEMENT
Photos are one of the key attributes to represent building listings and required the most time-intensive curation prior to publication.
- Review complete inventory of photos provided by the data feed
- Select active photos for building gallery and 'Request a tour' section
- Adjust the sequence of how photos are displayed
- Add accessibility content including captions and Alt text
- Upload additional photos that may not be available in the data feeds
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