Revenue Operations Lead

Overview

You're building the revenue operations function for Airbnb's Experiences business—think cooking classes, tours, activities that hosts offer alongside lodging. You work with Experiences business leaders across North America to craft GTM strategy, build analytical infrastructure, and figure out how to acquire and retain hosts who offer quality experiences. This is part strategic planning, part data analysis, part process design.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Public (IPO Dec 2020, $100B+ valuation)

Size: ~69,000 employees globally

Growth: Experiences business being actively expanded after initial launch and COVID pause. 2025 Summer Release just added Services marketplace (catering, massage, etc.). This is a growth investment area.

Market Position: Category leader in short-term rentals, but Experiences is smaller and faces competition from Viator, GetYourGuide, local tour operators. Trying to leverage existing Airbnb user base.

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• Host-side: Existing Airbnb property hosts who add Experiences, direct outreach to activity providers, organic applications
• Guest-side: In-app cross-sell to travelers booking stays, search/browse on Airbnb platform
• No traditional B2B sales team—this is marketplace ops, not enterprise sales

Your Role in GTM:

• You don't sell directly. You build the strategy, analytics, and processes that enable regional teams to acquire quality hosts and drive guest bookings
• You identify which host segments to target, what regions to prioritize, how to price/position experiences
• You build dashboards showing host acquisition cost, experience quality metrics, booking conversion rates

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Viator (TripAdvisor), GetYourGuide, Klook, local tour operators, hotel concierge services

How They Differentiate: Integrated with Airbnb stays, brand trust, existing user base of 150M+ travelers. But Experiences is still smaller than core lodging business.

Common Objections (Host-side): Commission rates, discoverability vs competitors, platform policies, guest expectations

Win Themes: Access to Airbnb's massive traveler base, brand credibility, integrated booking experience

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Strategic Planning (30%) | Data Analysis (35%) | Cross-functional Projects (25%) | Reporting/Admin (10%)

Key Activities

• GTM Strategy Design: Work with regional Experiences leaders to define which host segments to target, what growth levers to pull, how to allocate resources across markets. This means building business cases, modeling scenarios, making recommendations.
• Analytics & Insights: Build and maintain dashboards tracking host acquisition, experience quality scores, guest booking rates, revenue per experience. Dig into data to figure out what's working and what's not. You'll live in SQL, Tableau/Looker, and spreadsheets.
• Process & Systems: Design operational processes for host onboarding, quality review, performance management. Work with product/engineering to define tool requirements. Document playbooks for regional teams.
• Cross-functional Orchestration: Partner with marketing (host acquisition campaigns), product (platform features), policy (quality standards), finance (pricing strategy). Lots of Slack and Zoom. You're the connective tissue between teams.
• Performance Reporting: Build monthly/quarterly business reviews for leadership. Explain why numbers are up or down, what actions you're taking, what you need from other teams.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Ambiguity: Experiences is still being figured out at Airbnb. You're building the playbook, not executing a mature one. Lots of "we should try this and see what happens."
• Marketplace Complexity: You're optimizing for both hosts and guests, which means tradeoffs. Host acquisition cost vs guest booking rates vs experience quality vs take rates. No easy answers.
• Influence Without Authority: You don't manage the regional teams you support. Success requires getting buy-in, building relationships, proving your analysis is valuable. Lots of stakeholder management.
• Data Inconsistency: Working across multiple markets with different data maturity. You'll spend time cleaning data and reconciling discrepancies before you can analyze anything.
• Big Company Bureaucracy: This is Airbnb at 69K employees. Getting things done requires navigating cross-functional processes, securing engineering resources, aligning multiple stakeholders. Projects move slower than at a startup.

What Success Looks Like

• Regional teams consistently use your dashboards and ask for your input on decisions
• Host acquisition cost decreases while experience quality metrics hold or improve
• Guest booking conversion rates increase quarter-over-quarter
• Leadership references your analysis in strategy discussions and resource allocation decisions
• You launch a new GTM initiative (new host segment, new market, new pricing model) that demonstrably moves the business

Who You're Supporting

Primary Partners:

• Regional Experiences GMs/Directors (North America markets)
• Global Experiences Strategy/Operations leadership
• Host acquisition and community teams

What They Need From You:

• Clear data on what's working and where to invest
• Strategic recommendations backed by analysis
• Operational processes that scale
• Dashboards they can use without constantly asking you for custom pulls

Requirements

• 5-8+ years in revenue operations, strategy & operations, management consulting, or growth roles
• Strong SQL skills—you need to pull and analyze data yourself, not just request it from analysts
• Experience with BI tools (Tableau, Looker, Power BI) for dashboard building
• Background in marketplace, platform, or two-sided network businesses is a major plus
• Proven ability to craft GTM strategy and influence cross-functional teams
• Comfortable with ambiguity and building from scratch
• Stakeholder management skills—you'll be coordinating across product, marketing, finance, policy
• Understanding of B2B2C dynamics (acquiring supply-side to serve demand-side) preferred