Snowdrops

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Inspiration

Heavy snowfalls, ice storms and snowstorms, dense fogs, sleets, strong winds, etc. – iconic features of our Canadian winter challenge aviation, which could profoundly mess up your flight schedule during this time of the year. Many of us or people we know have experienced the seemingly endless waiting time when flights got delayed; we had no access to hotels’ availability at the airport complex due to either the excess demand or literally knowing nothing about this service. We would like to look for solutions to increase passenger’s access to hotel’s availability at their current airport, which could significantly reduce the bothersome or frustration that they are likely to experience while travelling by air in the winter.

What it does

Our website serves as a bridge between hotels, airlines, and passengers. We gather passengers’ information, together with (assumingly provided) updated data from airlines’ hotel partners, we provide passengers with hotels with rooms available, and estimated waiting time for hotels with all rooms occupied. Also, we take into account passengers’ circumstances such as urgency, disability, or visa issues preventing them from travelling to hotels outside the airport complex, we facilitate in finding the hotel accommodations that ensure passengers reach their destination smoothly.

How we built it

HTML, JavaScript and CSS are the main languages we use to make our ideas come to life. In addition, we also incorporate Squarespace, Google Form, Google Spreadsheets and Canva to inform design decisions.

Challenges we ran into

To provide passengers with the most updated information about hotels’ availability, we need a database where hotels can keep pulling in their current availability. We also originally wished to have JavaScript search up nearby hotels according to where a passenger was stuck, however we were unsure of where to start and so opted to list popular hotels instead. Budget.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

On our “Flight Tracker” page, we created a search engine from scratch to efficiently look through a list of 300+ airports. Although it was a simple search algorithm, we were proud to have found a simple trick, of comparing the first letter before comparing the rest of the string, which greatly reduced the speed from 1-2 seconds to instantly. We are proud of how quickly we got along. We were able to discuss various ideas and to hear each other out and switch paths even if we were already going down a different path.

What we learned

We learned that a team succeeds most when they are challenging each other’s ideas, and taking initiative for conversations in order to fill holes we previously couldn’t see. Also, each of us feels that we learned a lot about time management due to the intense concentration within a very limited time budget.

What's next for Snowdrops

Our web page is now quite basic, meaning that there is lots of space for improvement in terms of functionality and design. On the top of those, we hope to incorporate real-time database from our partners (airlines and hotels) to our webpage so that we can provide passengers with the most updated information such as flight departures and delays, hotels near airports, etc. We also think it would be more convenient and safer for users to have the application version.