Author: Taylor Warfield, Former Bain Manager and interviewer

Last Updated: June 22, 2026

 

The Expedia case interview is a business problem-solving round used for product, strategy, and analytics roles, where you work through a realistic travel or marketplace scenario and defend a clear recommendation. This guide breaks down the exact case types Expedia asks, how the company actually makes money, and the step-by-step method to structure any case and pass every round.

 

Before reading on:

 

Most candidates waste weeks jumping between articles, videos, and books without a clear plan. Get my free 7-day case interview course and learn the exact system that has helped 82% of students land consulting, Fortune 500, and startup offers—in just 5 minutes a day.

👉 Sign up for free

 

Key Takeaways

 

To pass the Expedia case interview, structure the problem into clear buckets, ground your analysis in how Expedia earns money on bookings and advertising, and finish with an executable recommendation backed by numbers.

 

• Expedia cases show up most in product manager, product analyst, and strategy roles, usually as a 20 to 45 minute discussion

 

• The four common case types are market sizing, product and growth, marketplace profitability, and market entry

 

• Expedia earns money through booking commissions, merchant margins, advertising, and a fast-growing B2B segment

 

• Interviewers favor practical, data-driven moves over abstract strategy, so propose changes the team could actually ship

 

• The full process runs from a recruiter screen to a panel loop and takes about one month on average

 

• Practicing real travel-marketplace cases out loud is the fastest way to get comfortable before the loop

 

What Is the Expedia Case Interview?

 

An Expedia case interview is a 20 to 45 minute problem-solving exercise where you analyze a realistic travel scenario, such as growing hotel bookings or launching a new feature, then recommend a solution. It tests structured thinking, business judgment, and your ability to turn data into a practical decision.

 

Unlike a coding test or a pure behavioral round, the case puts you in the seat of an Expedia employee facing a real decision. You might be asked to size a new market, diagnose why margins are slipping, or decide whether to enter a new travel category.

 

Having interviewed candidates at Bain and coached hundreds since, I can tell you the core skill is identical to what consulting firms test in a traditional case interview: breaking a messy problem into parts and reasoning toward an answer. The travel context changes the flavor, not the fundamentals.

 

How Does Expedia Make Money?

 

Expedia makes money primarily by taking a cut of the travel bookings it facilitates, plus a growing stream of advertising and business-to-business revenue. Knowing this model is the difference between a generic answer and one that sounds like you already work there.

 

Expedia Group is one of the world's largest online travel agencies. It connects travelers with hotels, flights, car rentals, and vacation rentals across brands like Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo.

 

In 2024, Expedia grew gross bookings and revenue 7%, reaching a record of about $110 billion in gross travel bookings and roughly $13.7 billion in revenue. That scale is why even a one percentage point shift in a metric can mean hundreds of millions of dollars.

 

There are four revenue streams you should understand before any case:

 

• Merchant model: Expedia collects payment from the traveler upfront and pays the hotel or airline later, keeping the margin in between

 

• Agency model: Expedia passes the booking to the supplier and earns a commission on the completed sale

 

• Advertising and media: hotels and partners pay to promote listings, and trivago drives meta-search referrals

 

• B2B: Expedia powers booking technology for airlines, banks, and other travel sellers, and this segment grew 24% in the fourth quarter of 2024

 

At its core, Expedia runs a two-sided marketplace. Travelers sit on one side and travel suppliers like hotels and airlines sit on the other, and more supply attracts more travelers in a loop that compounds.

 

Like other travel marketplaces such as Airbnb, Expedia lives and dies by matching the right traveler to the right room at the right price. Its One Key loyalty program, launched in 2023, exists to keep travelers booking inside the family of brands instead of shopping around.

 

What Types of Case Questions Does Expedia Ask?

 

Expedia case questions fall into four buckets: market sizing and estimation, product and growth, marketplace profitability, and market entry. Most interviews pull from one or two of these, framed around travel, bookings, or a specific Expedia brand.

 

There are four case types worth preparing for.

 

Market sizing and estimation cases

 

These ask you to estimate a number from scratch, such as how many hotel room nights Expedia books in the US each year or the size of the online travel market. Interviewers care about clean assumptions and quick case interview math, not a perfect figure.

 

State your assumptions out loud and define terms first. A real Expedia estimation prompt starts with clarifying what counts: are we measuring nights booked or transactions, and do we count a booking if the traveler cancels or never shows up?

 

Product and growth cases

 

These ask how you would grow a metric or design a feature, such as increasing repeat bookings on Hotels.com or building a travel recommendation product. Strong answers tie every idea back to a metric like conversion rate, repeat booking rate, or net promoter score.

 

Treat these like a growth strategy problem. Break growth into acquiring new travelers, converting browsers into bookers, and keeping existing customers coming back, then attack the lever with the biggest upside.

 

Marketplace profitability cases

 

These hand you a falling-margin or shrinking-profit scenario, such as Vrbo profitability declining, and ask you to find the cause and fix it. Start from the basic equation that profit equals revenue minus costs, then break revenue into bookings multiplied by the take rate Expedia earns per booking.

 

A clean profitability structure separates whether the problem is fewer bookings, a lower take rate, or rising costs like marketing and customer acquisition. Diagnose before you prescribe.

 

Market entry and expansion cases

 

These ask whether Expedia should enter a new country, category, or product line, such as pushing alternative accommodations into a new region. Weigh market attractiveness, competition, and whether Expedia has the supply and technology to win.

 

The same logic from a classic market entry case applies here. Size the prize, check whether Expedia can realistically capture share, and only then decide how to enter, whether that means building, partnering, or buying.

 

These four case types overlap heavily with classic consulting cases. If you want a faster path through all of them, my case interview course walks you through each one with proven structures and worked examples in as little as 7 days.

 

What Does the Expedia Interview Process Look Like?

 

The Expedia interview process usually runs from a recruiter screen to a multi-round panel loop and takes about one month on average for most roles. Cases tend to appear in the hiring manager round and again in the final loop, mixed with behavioral questions.

 

Stage	Length	What to expect
Recruiter screen	About 30 minutes	Background, motivation, and role fit over the phone
Hiring manager	45 to 60 minutes	Behavioral questions plus a short case or product discussion
Panel loop	3 to 5 interviews	Deeper cases, a product teardown, metrics questions, and behavioral rounds with the team and senior leaders
Decision	1 to 2 weeks	Offer or feedback, sometimes after a short wait while other candidates finish

 

Candidate reports on Glassdoor rate the process as medium difficulty, and referrals are the most common way in. Most product roles take roughly 30 days from first contact to decision, though some run six to eight weeks.

 

The behavioral side carries real weight, so do not treat it as a warm-up. Expect questions about a time you solved a hard problem, adapted to change, or used data to make a call, all mapped to Expedia's core values.

 

Strong stories matter as much as a clean case. My fit interview course helps you build structured answers that work for the behavioral rounds at Expedia and beyond.

 

One pattern shows up again and again in candidate accounts: Expedia interviewers reward practical, shippable ideas over sweeping strategy. Offer concrete optimizations a team could test next quarter, not a five-year vision with no path to action.

 

How Do You Solve an Expedia Case?

 

To solve an Expedia case, follow five steps: clarify the question, structure your approach, analyze with numbers, pressure-test your idea, and recommend a clear action. The method is the same one used in any strong case interview, applied to travel and marketplace problems.

 

1. Clarify the objective: repeat the question back and ask a few sharp clarifying questions so you solve the right problem
   
   
2. Structure your approach: lay out the few buckets that matter before working through any of them
   
   
3. Analyze with numbers: walk through the math out loud and tie each calculation to a real decision
   
   
4. Pressure-test your idea: brainstorm risks and second-order effects before you commit to an answer
   
   
5. Recommend a clear action: state your recommendation first, then back it with two or three reasons and a next step

 

Here's an example of the structure in action. Say the interviewer asks how to grow bookings on a specific brand, and you split the problem into more visitors, a higher booking conversion rate, and a larger average booking value, then focus on whichever lever the data says is weakest.

 

Sample Expedia Case Interview Questions and Answers

 

The two worked examples below show how to apply the method to common Expedia prompts. Each uses round, illustrative numbers so you can follow the logic rather than memorize figures.

 

Example 1: How would you increase repeat bookings on Hotels.com?

 

You: First, let me define repeat bookings as the share of customers who book a second trip within 12 months. I want to grow that rate, not just total bookings.

 

You: I'd split the problem into three reasons people don't rebook: they forgot about us, a competitor offered a better deal, or their first experience disappointed them. Let's say only 25 out of every 100 first-time bookers return today.

 

You: The biggest opportunity is retention through the loyalty program, because returning customers cost almost nothing to reach. I'd push One Key rewards, send personalized trip reminders, and prompt app downloads, since app users tend to rebook more often.

 

You: My recommendation is to prioritize a loyalty and personalization push first, test it on one market, and measure the lift in 12-month repeat rate before rolling it out. That gives the team a shippable experiment, not a guess.

 

Example 2: Estimate annual hotel room nights Expedia books in the US

 

You: I'll start with the US population of about 330 million and assume roughly two thirds, or 220 million, are adults who travel. Let's say the average traveler books 2 hotel trips a year online.

 

You: That gives 440 million online hotel trips, and at an average of 2 nights per trip, about 880 million online room nights a year in the US. If Expedia captures roughly a 10% share of online travel spending, that points to around 88 million room nights.

 

You: To grow that 10%, I'd focus on conversion and supply. Adding more hotel inventory in high-demand cities and reducing checkout friction would lift bookings without needing a single new visitor.

 

Tips to Pass the Expedia Case Interview

 

The best Expedia candidates pair a clean structure with real knowledge of the travel business. These five tips separate strong performers from the rest.

 

Tip #1: Learn how Expedia makes money before you prep cases

 

You cannot reason about bookings or margins without knowing the merchant model, the take rate, and the B2B engine. Spend an hour reading Expedia's latest earnings release so your numbers and instincts match how the company actually operates.

 

Tip #2: Lead with structure, not a guess

 

Take a few seconds of silence, then lay out your buckets before solving. A simple, logical breakdown beats a rushed answer, and knowing common case interview frameworks gives you a reliable starting point.

 

Tip #3: Tie every idea back to a metric

 

Expedia is a data-driven company, so vague ideas fall flat. Standard case interview tips apply here too: quantify the impact of each recommendation and name the metric you'd watch to measure it.

 

Tip #4: Propose ideas the team could actually ship

 

Interviewers consistently favor executable optimizations over grand visions. When you suggest a fix, describe how you'd test it next quarter and what success would look like.

 

Tip #5: Practice out loud with realistic travel cases

 

Reading about cases is not the same as solving one while someone watches. Mock practice with feedback closes the gap fastest, and my interview coaching pairs you with a former interviewer who runs realistic cases and tells you exactly what to fix.

 

The Expedia case interview rewards candidates who understand the travel-booking model and can turn that understanding into a clear, executable recommendation. Start by learning how Expedia earns revenue, drill the four case types out loud, and you will walk into every round ready to lead the discussion.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Does Expedia ask case interviews?

 

Yes. For product manager, product analyst, and strategy roles, Expedia candidates often face case studies, product discussions, and estimation questions. These usually appear in the hiring manager round and again in the final panel loop, alongside behavioral questions.

 

How long is the Expedia case interview?

 

Most Expedia cases run 20 to 45 minutes inside a larger interview round. The case is rarely a standalone session. It is usually paired with behavioral questions and a discussion of your past projects.

 

What types of cases does Expedia ask?

 

Expedia case questions fall into four buckets: market sizing and estimation, product and growth, marketplace profitability, and market entry. Most are framed around travel, bookings, or a specific Expedia brand such as Hotels.com or Vrbo.

 

How hard is the Expedia interview?

 

Candidates generally rate the Expedia interview as medium difficulty. The bar is high for structured thinking and business judgment, but the cases are practical rather than abstract. Interviewers reward shippable ideas over grand strategy.

 

How long does the Expedia interview process take?

 

The full Expedia interview process takes about one month on average, based on candidate-reported data. Some roles move faster, with offers in about two weeks, while others run six to eight weeks across multiple rounds.

 

How do I prepare for an Expedia case interview?

 

Start by learning how Expedia makes money on bookings, advertising, and B2B technology. Then practice the four common case types out loud until your structure is automatic. Finish by preparing behavioral stories that match Expedia's core values.

 

Everything You Need to Land a Consulting Offer

 

Need help passing your interviews?

• Case Interview Course: Become a top 10% case interview candidate in 7 days while saving yourself 100+ hours
  
  
• Fit Interview Course: Master 98% of consulting fit interview questions in a few hours
  
  
• Interview Coaching: Accelerate your prep with 1-on-1 coaching with Taylor Warfield, former Bain interviewer and best-selling author

 

Need help landing interviews?

• Resume Review & Editing: Craft the perfect resume with unlimited revisions and 24-hour turnaround

 

Need help with everything?

• Consulting Offer Program: Go from zero to offer-ready with a complete system

 

Not sure where to start?

• Free 40-Minute Training: Triple your chances of landing consulting interviews and 8x your chances of passing them