Travellers’ donate baggage space to charity app wins Sabre’s £10k hackathon
Howard Lake | 10 July 2015 | News
An app that lets international travellers donate their spare baggage capacity to charities has won the £10,000 prize in Sabre Corporation’s travel hackathon, held in London.
The app, Travita, helps match business travellers that have spare space and weight in their baggage to small charities who need equipment or items brought out to them in the travellers’ destination country.
When they log in, travellers can see which items are needed in the country they are travelling to. If they choose to take them then can then drop them off at the airport at a special charity pick-up point.
Travita’s team was among 150 people from 18 countries who took part in the one-day hackathon with the aim of creating new digital tools and apps for global travel.
Travita has been created by Sameen Islam, Kristina Semenyuk and Jaykumar Pradeep Rawal, three 19-year-old students at Queen Mary’s University, London, and 35-year-old Katie Rushton, who has a background working for start-ups.
Sabre is a technology provider to the travel and tourism industry. Greg Webb, one of five judges and president at Sabre Travel Network, said:
“We chose Travita as our overall winner because it displayed the most unique use of technology that can provide a new way for frequent travellers to give back to the community. It’s something we’ve never seen before and something we believe will go a long way.”
Here is the demo of the app in its current format (no sound):
[youtube height=”450″ width=”800″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLp7hI46W8k[/youtube]
Main image: Airport departure board by Matej Kastelic on Shutterstock.com
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.