AuthentiCity

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Inspiration

When we recalled our experiences with tourism, we thought back to trips like when we travelled to Montreal. Each of us recalled experiences when it was difficult to find genuine tour guides who could show us the city beyond the typical tourist spots. We discovered that we all often ended up with overly commercialized tours that did not capture the real culture of the place. These frustrations made us realize the potential there is in connecting travellers directly with authentic locals who know and love their city. That’s what inspired AuthentiCity — a platform designed to make travel more authentic, personal, and community-driven.

What it does

AuthentiCity connects people who want to experience the real city in the eyes of a local, and community-driven volunteers who want to share their love of the city for tourists to experience.

AuthentiCity is a completely not-for-profit website that allows travellers to view the authentic local tourist guides at any city, with a built-in review function so that travellers know they have access to the best guides. Travellers can contact the guides to set up a tip-based tourism session at any time. At the end of a tourism session, travellers are encouraged to make reviews for their guides to improve the experience for all users.

How we built it

We used React and TypeScript to develop the website and host it on Netlify. We used GitHub to collaborate between group members and had to handle GeminiAPI keys to create our chatbot.

Challenges we ran into

Version controlling - integrating changes with GitHub, ensuring up-to-date files for all collaborators Too complex idea - Our original idea was too complex, we needed to simplify our goals to fit the hackathon time-length and scope

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We created a fully functional website using React and TypeScript. We were able to host it on a GoDaddy domain, which anyone can visit and see our project. We created an AI chatbot using GeminiAPI key.

What we learned

We learned to use GitHub, React, and Gemini API to create a fully functional prototype for a project. We learned how to host a website on a domain. We learned to plan our project in steps and understand when an idea is too complex to complete within our given timeframe.

What's next for AuthentiCity

Integrating AuthentiCity with the cloud to allow access to individual users and host tour guides’ interfaces. Furthermore, expanding our database of local guides, and allowing people to volunteer as tour guides on our site