TravelConPH

TravelCon links travelers with travel organizers to book fun activities, strengthening local tourism in the process.

Comment 3

Inspiration

Filipinos are traveling more than ever. Local tourism is on the rise with millennials and Gen-Zers always in the search for the next big thing within the 7107 islands of the Philippines. And to help them get their wanderlust fix are travel communities -- a cross between organized tour groups and social clubs, offering tour events that fit specific needs.

However, it's not that easy to find an upcoming tour event, let alone a travel group that caters to your needs. A traveler may search for a place they want to visit on Facebook, but some posts on the feed are just content related to the destination, but not really a package tour.

TravelCon PH makes it easier for travel groups and travelers alike to book upcoming tours, connect with the community, and engage with like-minded individuals through an easy to use platform with a web-based dashboard and a Chatbot.

Through the platform, travel organizers can create and manage events and event schedules, monitor revenues and view travelers that join their events.

As for the travelers, events created from the TravelCon platform by organizers will be searchable thru the chatbot, letting users view popular and upcoming events, search events by date, the number of attendees, their preferred budget, location, or the event name. Through the same bot, travelers can book and reserve slots for their selected event.

With TravelCon PH, everybody wins. By making it easier for organizers and travelers to create and book events -- TravelCon PH looks to strengthen the already-burgeoning community of local travelers looking for a way to travel on a budget may bring forth friendships that can last well after the tour is over. At the same time, with TravelCon PH enabling more people to travel around the country, it can help bring more revenue to countless local tourism industries like vendors, tour guides, transport service providers, and hospitality providers.

What it does?

This platform brings the travel community even closer by enabling tour organizers to create events and activities, and at the same time lets curious travelers search, inquire, browse and book those events using Facebook Messenger Chatbot.

How we built it

We built the web content management system using React for it enables us to do a one-way data binding. It's declarative and component-based, allowing us to create reusable components that we can repurpose in the event that a mobile version of the system is needed. On the chatbot side, we used Microsoft Bot Service with Facebook as a channel. In order to make the most out of Facebook's capability, we utilized its Graph API. And lastly, We used MongoDB as our database for fast database queries and aggregations.

Challenges we ran into

Our main challenge in making this app is creating the UI/UX since all members of the team are more proficient at working on the backend of the project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We regularly participate in local hackathons here in the Philippines, but this our first international partaking. Being able to share our ideas in an event organized by an extremely huge community such as Facebook is like presenting your idea to the whole world.

What we learned

We learned that Facebook tools combined with reliable and fast MongoDB aggregation features can really bring the best out of developers, able to convert ideas into real-world solutions.

What's next for TravelConPH

We wish to publish TravelCon PH as a free platform for all travel organizers here in the Philippines and if it works well here in our country. It has the potential for expansion into other regions -- able to bring organizers from other countries closer more than ever. :)

Test the Organizers App?

Use this sample credentials username: pons1234 password: pons1234

Built With

Share this project:

Updates

posted an update —

Updates

  1. Dashboard

    • Organizers can now see the top event and schedule.
    • Organizers can now see the no. of active, idle, and total events.
    • Organizers can now see the number of recent and total joiners.
    • Organizers can now see a live number of booking for the past 2 hours
    • Organizers can now see recent and all bookings.

  2. Notications

    • Organizer will be notified when a new event booking has been created.
    • Organizer will be notified when an event schedule has been completed.
    • Organizer will be notified when he/she earns a coin for a completed event.
    • Organizer will be notified when he/she has a successful referral

  3. Events

    • Organizers can now see the total and remaining collections for the event schedule and manage payments.
    • Orgainzers can now archive inactive events.
    • Events now has categories. eg. Hiking, Swimming, Island Hopping

  4. Coins

    • Organizers can now earn points from completing and event schedule and referrals
    • Organizers can see their spent, earned, expired, and omitted coins
    • Organizers can use their coins to add their event to bot's featured events

Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.