About the challenge

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

Checkout is about shipping something real, not slideware. 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. We're looking for working products that make travel or hospitality genuinely better. We're not looking for polished pitch decks with nothing behind them, or projects you built last month and dusted off for today.

Get started

Your challenge: ship something real that makes travel or hospitality better — in one day. Pick one of four tracks and go.

  • 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

Requirements

What to Build

Build a working product in one of the four tracks (AI trip planning, hotel & hospitality ops, local & experiences, or sustainability & the future of travel). Your submission should be a working prototype you can demo. Everything must be built during the event, solo or in a small team.

You'll present a 2–3 minute live demo to the judges if selected.

What to Submit

On your Devpost project page, include:

 

  • Project name and description
  • What you built and why — the problem and your approach
  • Team member names and roles
  • Link to your live demo

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

2 non-cash prizes
Overall Winner
1 winner

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

Best Project Built with ElevenLabs
1 winner

Each team member receives 3 months of ElevenLabs Scale tier ($897 value/team member, 1.8M credits/mo)

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Somya Gupta

Judging Criteria

  • Design (out of 5)
    Is it usable, considered, and polished for a one-day build? Would a real traveler or operator enjoy using it?
  • Uniqueness of Idea (out of 5)
    Does this take a fresh angle on travel or hospitality, or solve a problem others have overlooked?
  • Technical Execution (out of 5)
    Does it actually work? How much did the team genuinely build during the sprint?
  • Real-World Impact (out of 5)
    Does it solve a real travel or hospitality problem? Could a traveler, hotel, or operator actually use this — and would it make a meaningful difference?
  • Storytelling & Pitch (out of 5)
    Can the team explain the problem and demo the product clearly and convincingly in a few minutes?

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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