Travalog

Travalog – Plan, Split, Explore Together. A mobile-first trip planner that helps you coordinate itineraries, split expenses, and share travel memories — all in one place.

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🌟 Inspiration

Group travel should be exciting, not exhausting. But when it comes to managing trip plans, sharing costs, or deciding where to go — the process gets messy fast. We’ve experienced the stress of splitting bills, tracking itineraries, and coordinating with friends across multiple apps and chats.

We also noticed a bigger opportunity: local travel agencies often lack a digital platform to showcase their tour packages directly to travelers. What if Travalog could connect these agencies to group travelers, offering personalized plans and competitive pricing? That idea helped shape our broader vision.

🚀 What it does

Travalog is a collaborative, AI-enhanced mobile app that simplifies every aspect of group travel:

  • ✈️ Create and manage travel itineraries
  • 💸 Track & split expenses with charts and summaries
  • 📍 Visualize trip stops and routes on interactive maps
  • 📦 Build packing checklists and assign member roles
  • 🧠 Get AI-curated place suggestions via OpenRouter & Google Gemini
  • 🧾 Join trips using Trip ID or QR code with approval flow
  • 📊 Summarize group contributions, balances, and dues
  • 🧳 Lay the foundation for tour package discovery by local providers

🔧 How we built it

  • Frontend: [Expo + React Native] with Expo Router v2
  • Backend: [Supabase] for real-time DB, auth, and secure RLS rules
  • AI: Integrated with OpenRouter and Google Gemini experimental APIs
  • Maps: Built using expo-maps + Google Maps API
  • Charts: Implemented with react-native-chart-kit
  • Media + Sharing: QR generation, saving & sharing via expo-media-library
  • Dev & Builds: Managed using EAS and internal distribution

🧗 Challenges we ran into

  • Sharing images via native APIs (Android) while maintaining Expo compatibility
  • Debugging permissions and media access for QR and file operations
  • Fine-tuning AI prompts to generate contextual and relevant place suggestions
  • Configuring Supabase RLS securely for trip data access by members only
  • Balancing a clean UX with multi-feature functionality under time constraints

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Delivered an end-to-end trip planning + expense management flow
  • Enabled QR-based trip joining with role-based approvals
  • Integrated real-time AI suggestions for travel planning
  • Designed for future scalability, including tour package integration
  • Built an offline-ready architecture foundation using Supabase + Expo

📚 What we learned

  • Mobile-first UX design with Expo Router v2 and Native modules
  • Deep understanding of Supabase's RLS, Edge Functions, and Auth
  • How to integrate and prompt AI APIs for location-based, contextual responses
  • Native sharing, QR generation, and permission handling across Android/iOS

🔮 What's next for Travalog

  • 🧠 AI-powered smart itinerary generation that optimizes stop order and routing
  • 🗺️ Short route suggestions with distance + time optimization using Google Directions API
  • 🌍 Marketplace for local travel agencies to share curated packages and offer better pricing directly
  • 📶 Offline trip access for use in remote locations
  • 🧳 Packing list collaboration and automated suggestions
  • 📸 Group memory journaling and media uploads
  • 📥 Public trip sharing and discovery across traveler communities

Challenges Compliance

✅ Deploy Challenge (Netlify) (Eligible for frontend-based landing site) Though Travalog is a mobile-first app, we can publish a companion web landing page (e.g., for trip sharing or package discovery) via Netlify, showcasing a hybrid deployment approach. ✅ Startup Challenge (Supabase) Travalog uses Supabase extensively as the backend for scalable authentication, real-time database operations, and row-level security. It’s already architected to scale to millions of users, and leverages Supabase Edge Functions, Postgres views, and efficient query structures.

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