How many times have you run through hundreds of pictures of the hotel rooms before you booked one? Probably, every time you travelled you did that. And yet, there would be instances that you landed up in a completely different environment from what you had expected. The winning team of Sabre’s Digital Duchess Hackathon for ‘women techies’ solves this problem in one of the most creative ways.
Hundreds of women coders and passionate design thinkers from India, about 728 to be precise, submitted their hack ideas to create some cool and disruptive applications for the travel industry.
“We are continously working towards offering a platform to women technologists who are innovative, creative and technically very strong. The Digital Duchess Hackathon was an initiative to not only offer a platform to the women techies to showcase their talent but also make it fun and challenging,” said Sunaina Tickoo, senior manager, Human Resources, Sabre
Of these, 29 top-notch women hackers made it to the final round of the Sabre Digital Duchess Hackathon, all prepared to hack, code and build. The tech-savvy group, with an average work experience of atleast three years, spent 12-hours creating applications through cutting-edge technologies including Chat-Bots, Virtual Reality, Machine Learning, Data Analytics, Automation, Internet of Things and more.
First Winner: Inside Out
The first-place team, dubbed a combination of technologies to come up with a hack combining Chat Bots, Google Cardboard Camera App and Virtual Reality. Created by Deepa Sajani, the ‘Inside Out’ applications captures the 360 degree view of the hotel room along with the floor plan via Google Cardboard Camera App and generates a virtual photo album that can be integrated in the application. With a Virtual Reality viewer, travelers can then experience the room as if they were there. The team also used Chat-Bots that would recommend hotels at a location that would be based on potential keyword analysis of the travelers requirements. The tream won an award worth Rs 75,000/- ($1150)
Second Winner: Travelution
Taking the second place a prize of Rs 50,000/- ($770) was Travelution, by Abhinaya Mahendiran and Divya Ayoniza, that proposed to solve two main problems faced by e-commerce providers in the travel industry. The team built an application that would use predictive model to identify high value customers that are likely to churn from any travel agency. Based on the Lifetime Value of Customers, the agency can use targeted email and website campaigns to retain customers. The second part of the application identifies customers seeking discounts, and offers discounts to help customers make faster decisions and prevent drop-off from the search results page.
Third Winner: Safer Traveling
Pooja Baraskar grabbed the third place for her ‘Safer Traveling’ application that senses drivers’ activities such as using phone, not concentrating on the road, sleepy or drunk through facial expression detection using RealSense Camera. The output is then connected to an Internet of Things (IoT) device that recognizes the facial expression, matches it to the situation and stores the data on the cloud. The application then sends an alert to nearest police station or emergency contact number or hospitals in case of accidents or abnormal activity in the vehicle. Pooja received a cash prize of Rs 25,000/- ($380) for the hack.
