Inspiration
While brainstorming during the Makeathon, we focused on a problem everyone faces: the "paradox of choice" when booking travel. We realized that even with powerful comparison tools like CHECK24, users often spend hours manually adjusting filters to find a hotel that fits their specific, nuanced needs. We asked ourselves: "What if you didn't have to click a hundred checkboxes? What if you could just talk to the search engine?" This led us to the idea of HotelKI—a bridge between a user’s natural thoughts and the perfect booking result.
What it does
HotelKI is an AI-driven assistant designed to revolutionize how we find accommodation. Instead of the traditional filter-heavy interface, users provide a simple natural language prompt, like: "I’m looking for a quiet boutique hotel in Berlin near the Spree with a workspace and a great vegan breakfast." The app parses these specific desires and suggests the most suitable hotels in the area. Our goal is to provide a "concierge-level" experience that feels personal, fast, and intuitive, removing the friction from the decision-making process.
How I built it
We developed a robust, full-stack solution using a multi-language architecture to handle the complexity of the CHECK24 challenge: AI & Processing: We used Python and FastAPI to build the intelligence layer, which processes natural language prompts and maps them to hotel attributes. Back-end: The core infrastructure was built with Java and Spring Boot, ensuring a scalable and reliable system for data management and API orchestration, tested thoroughly via Postman. Front-end: We used Dart and Flutter to create a sleek, responsive mobile application that brings the AI's suggestions to life. Design & Workflow: Our UI/UX was prototyped in Figma and Photoshop, while we used Trello to maintain tight team organization throughout the sprint.
Challenges I ran into
Building a project for a company as established as CHECK24 set the bar high. Our biggest challenge was the data cleaning and "prompt engineering"—ensuring the AI could distinguish between a user wanting a "cheap" hotel versus one that is "good value."
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
The moment of greatest pride was seeing a complex, conversational sentence transform into a curated list of hotels in a matter of seconds. We successfully moved away from "keyword matching" to "intent understanding." Delivering a working end-to-end prototype—from a Figma sketch to a functional Flutter app connected to a Spring Boot backend—was a massive milestone for us as a team.
What I learned
The Makeathon taught us the importance of "Team Management and Organisation" in a high-pressure environment.
What's next for HotelKI
We believe HotelKI has the potential to become the standard for how people interact with comparison platforms. Our roadmap includes integrating real-time pricing data and expanding the AI's capabilities to handle multi-city trip planning. We want to refine our ranking system to be even more predictive, eventually making the "perfect match" the very first result every single time.
