THack was a hackathon organized by the airport administration. The hackathon took place within SFO – the airport of San Francisco. Larissa and I decided to participate in the hackathon before flying home.

Inspiration

Two German developers came to San Fransisco two years ago for Apple Developer Conference. Looking for a cheap and convenient place to stay, they booked a room at a hotel at Tenderloin, SF. However, they had no idea that Tenderloin was an unsafe place at nights. So, they were followed by a drunk person late night on their way to the hotel.

Two years later, an international team of students from Germany, MIT and UC Berkeley came together to take revenge. They created SafeStay that helps travelers to visualize crime data to find safe hotels to stay.

How it works

We visualized a crime-database of San Francisco as a heat map using the Google-Maps JavaScript API. Users can select hotels at the city they specify according to the safety zones and availability of hotels. Users are then linked to the hotel they choose. To parse the hotel data with dates, locations and availability, we use Amadeus API.

Challenges We Ran Into

It was our first time to deploy a server online. We struggled with Heroku with Django. It was our first time to extract data from APIs and use them in realtime at our application.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

Setting up the Heroku server, parsing tons of data. The team we set up and friendships that will last forever, across continents.

What We learned

What we are proud of How to use Amadeus API

What’s next for SafeStay

Creating a sound business model (considering Lead Generation Model) Expanding our features (example: develop a customizable search engine)