Tight! Budget

Inspiration

We realised there wasn't an easy way to compare trips to different cities and in a big range of dates when we tried to organise our end-of-degree travel. Also, the comparators we found didn't take into account the cost of accomodation and food in the destinations, which we found essential in our search, as we are students and track every last pennie!

What it does

This code provides the user with an easy interface that allows them to choose the following parameters: city of origin, city(cities) of destination, dates in between which you can travel, number of days you want to stay abroad, number of travellers and maximum budget. The application returns different combinations of flights and hotels, taking into account the cost of living. They are ordered according to your preferences (if the user provides an ordered list of destinations) and always fit your budgets. The applications shows by default only three results, but the users are able to continue looking into the possibilities for the same city or skip to the next destination of their choice.

How we built it

We use Skyscanner's API to browse the caché flights and thus provide a quicker answer. However, given that there's no API to do the equivalent for Hotels, we are forced to do a live search everytime for that part. The core of the algorithm is coded in python and html is used to interact with the users.

Challenges we ran into

As newbies we had challenges practically every step of the way. The main challenges were finding databases to provide the cost of living of each country and ensembling python with html, a language we hadn't use before. Speed was also a critical point at our project, as the algorithm performes too slowly. A few changes were introduced, but it still reminds one of the main problems.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Just before starting the project we barely knew what APIs were, so getting acquainted with them and how to use and implement them is something we are very proud of. We're very happy with the result of our very first web-page and its beautiful interface, but especially of getting html to work!

What's next for Tight! Budget

We believe that Tight! Budget has a place in the market. It gives people the power to get the best combinations without having to pay to third parties. Also, there is great room for improvement: from getting bigger databases to compare more prices to extend to other areas related to travelling. It is the ultimate app to help you decide where and when to go with a limited budget.