awayfromlocalhost

Providing the best travel experience from two world: easiness of travel agencies and customisation of the Internet.

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Inspiration

Travel agencies are a really confortable way to plan trips: they already have the packages, the knowledge... So the customer basically walks in there and comes out with a great trip with the minimal effort. The problem with it is that often, travel agencies only sell predefined packages, which doesn't always necessarily fit the customer needs or preferences.

Packages are common because the communication between agencies and other parties, such as SBB, might be difficult, and if high personalisation from the customer is required, almost impossible.

What it does

We are providing a tool to users and agencies to ease and improve trip planning through Switzerland using SBB's network. In a simple and user-friendly interface, the customer selects its needs (from really specific to general), and the system creates a custom trip through Swiss spots using SBB trains.

The customer gets a nice visual representation of his upcoming trip and is able to export a PDF document with all the details of the train combinations so the agency can contact SBB and start the trip.

User can select the cities he wants to visit among a big variety of a suggested ones and they will be integrated into the trip planning together with other cities suggested by the system to complete the journey. The user is also able to select among activity preferences to get more accurate recommendations. Finally, some logistics details can be specified such as number of travellers, dates and special discounts.

How we built it

There are two main parts of this project.

  • First, is the suggestion engine. We took data not only from SBB's API but from a few Swiss open data sites so we can get a better context of which are the places to visit based on clustering techniques.

  • Second, is the frontend part. The user-friendly interface is designed to provide a easy and fluid experience to the user. By providing a visual approach, the user can easily choose those places to visit or activities to perform just by its visual attraction without necessity of extra research about the suggested places.

Challenges we ran into

Gather sufficient development data.

Handle unstable API.

Conceptualise easy-to-use UX and UI.

Render pdf with journey information.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Generate user-friendly interface and visual approach to travel planning.

Implement rule based recommendation system.

Crawling and gathering data of different origins.

What we learned

Manage large amounts of data to drive conclusions.

Handle heterogeneous APIs.

Cool Swiss touristy spots :)

What's next for awayfromlocalhost

Expand customisable details and higher integration of SBB APIs to achieve more detailed and customisable plans.

Add support for external providers (such as ski resorts, hotels, restaurants...).

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