Checkout - The Travel & Hospitality Hackathon | Powered by Stay22, Rove & Propellic | $100k worth of travel prizes

UEvent Description

Come build the future of travel and hospitality in a single day. Checkout is NYC's first travel-themed hackathon. Founders, engineers, and designers team up in the morning, build all afternoon, and demo real products to founder-judges by evening.

Problem Statement

Travel and hospitality is one of the biggest industries in the world and one of the most underbuilt in software. From clunky booking flows to hotels running on decades-old systems, there's enormous room to build. Your challenge: ship something real that makes travel or hospitality better — in one day.

The Tracks

AI trip planning — agents and copilots for booking, itineraries, and personalized travel

Hotel & hospitality ops — front desk, guest experience, revenue management, back-of-house

Local & experiences — discovery, tours, restaurants, events, the on-the-ground trip

Sustainability & the future of travel — green travel, accessibility, how people move and stay

What to Expect

A full day of high-energy building - morning to evening

Solo or small teams (your choice)

Sponsor tools, APIs, and mentors on hand

Evening demos, judging, and prizes

Prizes

50K Rove Miles.

Free 2 to 12-hour stay at any of Nappr's 5,300 hotels worldwide.

Globe Thrivers: Each member of the winning team receives $100 toward their next hotel booking when booking through Globe Thrivers.

Anecdote Travel is offering a total of $800 in hotel credits (enough for a swanky NYC staycation!) to the team with the best project that makes life easier for human or agentic travel advisors. Anything that helps them work faster (e.g. voice agents for contacting hotels, agentic booking), find hidden gems, or provide higher quality personalization and service are all fair game. Anecdote concierges will help plan your stay and help you make the most of your credits!

Each team member of the winning team receives 3 months of ElevenLabs Pro tier ($297 value/team member, 600k credits/mo)

Best Project Built with ElevenLabs: Each team member receives 3 months of our Scale tier ($897 value/team member, 1.8M credits/mo)

Judges

Kevin Faisal - Founding Engineer at Rove, a travel rewards platform helping travelers earn and redeem airline miles across everyday purchases and bookings.

Shir Ibgui - Founder of Globe Thrivers, building social commerce infrastructure for the travel creator economy.

Riccardo Vittoria - Co-founder and CEO of Acai Travel, using AI to modernize travel operations and customer support.

Jared Lerner - Founder and ZzZEO of Nappr, a hospitality marketplace helping travelers book flexible daytime spaces for rest and recovery.

Shiv Jethi - Product at Cursor

Prince Rumi - Excelsior Edge Ventures, Partner | AI Researcher

Shrey Gupta - Founder and CEO of Anecdote Travel: a modern travel agency that merges the best of AI with the best of human customer care

Marva Babel - Hospitality entrepreneur and co-founder of Babel Social, with 15+ years building hospitality spaces, events, and guest experiences in Brooklyn.

Galina Fendikevich - Founder of Artificial Reality, researching real-world AI adoption across industries, including luxury hospitality, hotels, and travel.

Daniel Mena - Founder of AeroXplorer, a digital aviation media platform focused on industry analysis, news, and visual storytelling.

Lucia Mari Sanguino - Co-founder at AIVA

Paula Rodriguez - Co-founder at AIVA

Srinivas Dharaneesh Jonna - Software Developer/Researcher

Eni Maj - Founder of Travel Spoken

Who Should Attend

Founders and aspiring founders in travel, hospitality, and consumer.

Engineers.

Designers.

Operators.

You don't need a finished idea - just show up ready to build.

Sponsors

Rove - a flexible travel rewards program that lets you book flights and hotels by spending miles at significant value

Propellic - the destination digital marketing agency for travel and tourism brands

Stay22 - a travel tech company that offers affiliate revenue generation opportunities for events, ticketing, and travel media publications to monetize their content.

Hosts

Somya Gupta - The face of the NYC startup ecosystem.

George - Founder, WanderWorth.

ConnNext is a next-gen mobile app and community built for career growth.

Pulse NYC AI - A community, incubator, and venture fund built for founders, researchers, and technologists shaping the future of AI in New York City.

Madeline & Co. is the first Strategy and execution platform powered by Madeline-s1.

VisionBrew

Credit Sponsors

Elevenlabs - Powering the best enterprises, creators, and developers. From ElevenAgents for customer experience, ElevenCreative for content creation, to the leading AI voice generator.

Lovable - Your AI website builder.

Tavily: Connect your AI agents to the web.

AeroXplorer delivers the latest aviation news, airline updates, aircraft insights, and travel industry coverage from around the world