Shivankar Pilligundla, Hardik Khandelwal and Chaitanya Manas Cheedella, our iMTech students, secured the first runner-up position at TBO.com’s VoyageHacks Hackathon, showcasing their innovative technology-driven travel platform. This achievement marks a significant milestone for IIIT-B students on a national level. After a rigorous selection process, which included multiple rounds of shortlisting, only seven teams, including ours, made it to the finale. At the TBO Technology Center in Gurgaon, these teams presented their solutions to a panel of senior leadership. Shivankar provides insights to Naviiina about the innovative solution crafted by the team during the hackathon.
“VoyageHacks was conducted by TBO.com, It is a global platform that aims to simplify all buying and selling travel needs of travel partners across the world. The proprietary technology platform aims to simplify the demands of the complex world of global travel by seamlessly connecting highly distributed travel buyers and travel suppliers at scale.
The problem statement we worked on was building Mashups – Packages, Calendar, and trip itineraries using Generative AI. AI is changing our lives in incredible ways, and we could leverage it for quicker and better travel planning, refined experience or even saving money. Under mashups, we built a product that aids customers to bypass time-consuming steps, such as building packages, itineraries, suggestions on the best times for travel, economical transport decisions, etc. We have used TBO’s APIs and the power of GenAI to deliver an excellent experience to travelers.
The traditional approach to travel planning poses several challenges like Complex decision-making, time-intensive research, and the risk of overlooking optimal options. This impacts individual travelers and also creates friction for travel partners aiming to deliver exceptional experiences. The current standard in the industry where “one-size-fits-all” approach in conventional travel planning fails to address the unique preferences and needs of individual travelers, often resulting in generic itineraries. So, the integration of AI presents a transformative opportunity to address these pain points and enhance the overall travel planning experience for individuals and travel partners alike.
Seeing the worldwide travel and tourism revenue forecast, although the tourism sector experienced a temporary decline in revenue due to the impact of COVID, the forecast indicates a clear upward trajectory, signaling an anticipated increase in revenue. The market opportunity shows:
source: https://www.statista.com/outlook/mmo/travel-tourism/worldwide#revenue
- Growing Demand for Personalized Travel Experiences
- According to a global survey(2021) Booking.com identified a rising demand for customizable experiences, with 80% of travelers expressing interest in personalized travel recommendations.
- MasterCard’s survey says Organizations that can deliver a unique in-person experience have an edge over the competition
- Rising Need for Efficient and Streamlined Travel Planning
- In a survey conducted by Expedia, travelers spend over 5 hours researching trips on average. This highlights the time-intensive nature of traditional travel planning.
Coming to our solution, It begins with a straightforward user prompt, where the traveler provides basic details about their desired destination. Using the power of AI, we generate an initial GUI-based interactive workflow that visually represents the travel itinerary. Users can seamlessly edit this visual representation through the GUI(drag-drop, reorder, etc), adjusting parameters such as budget constraints and incorporating additional constraints like their pre-planned meeting schedules, Arrival/Departure times, and activity preferences. Using simple prompts, user can refine their day-wise flows and activities. We leverage real-time TBO APIs to fetch relevant and up-to-date data related to the user’s refined itinerary, including flight and hotel information. This data is then fed into a machine learning model API, enhancing the itinerary further. The iterative process continues until the traveler is satisfied, creating a feedback loop that refines the itinerary based on continuous user input”.
Some of the key features that the team built include:
- Visual Planner and AI-generated Workflows
- Recommender system to customize the itineraries based on user history.
- Real-time cost optimization
- Smart Prompt Generation
- Retrieval Augmented Generation(RAG) based chatbot
