Elevator pitch: / In three sentences – what's your idea?

The idea is to provide a platform to trade flight tickets like stock options on an open market place, bringing together the different interests of carriers, travellers and investors → that means disrupting a billion dollar market. Airlines can decrease their risk due to higher planning security and dynamic sale management; travellers profit from an increased market transparency leading to lower prices; and the platform opens completely new opportunities to investors worldwide. Our platform makes money by taking a small courtage per transaction.

Type of the project: web app, mobile app, data visualization?

Web application incl. landing page: Real-time stock price visualization with SVG and JavaScript Flight ticket parser for Gmail account with ad-hoc savings calculator Scala backend with SAP HANA in memory database: Simulation of orderbook and stock option price iOS mobile app (native): Transactional consumer application to buy and sell flight tickets

MVP: What's the minimum viable product? Which features does it have?

An open market platform to trade flight tickets as certificates, matching supply and demand of different market participants. A mobile app to trade your flight on the mobile phone and be informed by push notifications as soon as the price will reach your price limit to buy.

Target group: Who should use your product?

1. Airlines
2. Travellers
3. Travel Agencies / Traders

Use Case: How will users typically use this product?

Airlines

Similar to an IPO, carriers can offer their seats on the platform as soon as they publish a new schedule. They can decide on an initial price without having to deal with intermediaries. The easy and quick sales lead to high occupancy and thus an increased planning security for the airline. Overbooking flights is rendered unnecessary, thus decreasing the needed reserves and minimizing risk management costs. During the “time to expiry”, meaning the time until check-in, Airlines can also act as a market maker, assuring the market to stay liquid.

Travellers

Travellers looking for a specific flight can search for one on the open market and compare airlines. They can then decide on whether to buy immediately - for the current market-price - or to set a “Down-And-In” option that will push a notification as soon as the market-price drops below the desired threshold. Travellers can also look at price curves of similar flights in the past in order to time their purchase optimally, e.g. when to best book a flight home on christmas. Another great advantage for the Traveller is the possibility to resell the ticket without having to purchase a cancellation insurance. When the travel plans change, travellers can simply sell the ticket on the market until shortly before check-in.

Travel Agencies / Traders / Power Users

The flight market exchange opens new possibilities for investors of all kinds. Travel agencies can secure a good range of contingencies in advance, keeping the option to resell seats if not needed for their customers. Individual and professional traders as well as power users can bet on a trip to gain in value, e.g. during the holidays. In the open market, prices are determined by supply and demand only.

Challenges & solutions: What was the most difficult part of the project? What problems did you encounter? How did you solve them?

Technical Issues:

Bugs in the Gini API → solved by consulting API contact persons Connection issues with JDBC connector to HANA DB (HANA Tunnel) → We implemented a temporary in-memory buffer Creating a realistic price curve simulation → Combined randomized periodic curve algorithms Conceptional Issues: Defining an MVP for the pitch → evaluating the core values of our idea with decisions which will be prototyped Different target groups: professional power users and private consumers → targeted and role based UI design (iPhone app vs. web application)

Scalability: How can the project be further developed?

1) To widen the trade possibilities for:

a) Hotelrooms
b) Rental Cars

2) Enhance APIs to partners (Finanzen100, financial services industry, etc.)

3) Build more consumer apps on top of the trading platform; increase consumer options to filter flights by airline, flight class etc.

Technology: Which frameworks and solutions did you use?

Backend: Scala and Play Framework connected with SAP HANA in-memory database (HANA cloud platform) Web-Application: JavaScript, HTML5, Chartist, Gini API, Google Mail API Mobile App: iOS native (ObjectiveC)

Link: Please insert the deployment link. This is crucial. Try not to host things just locally.

http://sharex.triton-universe.com

Source code (optional): Please insert the link to your project's GitHub repository.

https://github.com/Michi-4G/hackday-sharx

Team:

• Thorsten Rohrscheidt ( Product / Expert ) @powercoach
• Rea Baxmann ( Product / Expert ) ./.
• Jascha Quintern ( Designer & Coder ) @fuchsvomwalde
• Nikolas Burk ( Coder ) @nikolasburk
• Michael Dell ( Coder ) @dell_mic