Virginia Tech students code the future of travel
Marriott International’s CodeFest invited students from all majors to compete in a hospitality focused tourism technology competition.
Reimagine the future of travel. Then, create it.
This was the challenge posed to 154 Virginia Tech students at CodeFest, an event sponsored by the Pamplin College of Business and hosted by Marriott International, on Oct. 18-23.
Pamplin Dean Saonee Sarker kicked off the event with Naveen Manga, chief technology officer of Marriott International. Manga shared a vision of building the best end-to-end travel experience with technology at the core. He ended with a “call to adventure” to the assembled teams: “Dream so big that it scares you. Then, dream bigger.”
This began a whirlwind 48 hours for teams to ideate their solutions, develop working prototypes, and prepare their presentations. The teams delivered their results in eight-minute pitches, presented to Marriott judges from multiple departments including software engineering, infrastructure delivery, cybersecurity and enterprise products.
The event, which was open to coders and non-coders alike, was held in Virginia Tech’s Data and Decision Sciences Building, the first building in the Global Business and Analytics Complex. Opened in 2023 as part of the Tech Talent Investment Program, the building functions as a transdisciplinary collaboration space, hosting multiple functions under one roof.
The opportunity to approach holistically a real-world business problem encouraged participants with both technical and non-technical backgrounds to join. “It’s essential that we have cross-functional teams with different perspectives.” said Lakshmikant Tripuraneni, vice president, IT application development at Marriott International. “The best products come out of cross-functional thinking.
Pualena Heather, who is studying economics and joined team Peregrine at the event, said that typically, her experience with teams consisted of accountants or people looking to get into investment banking. “So I haven’t had the opportunity to really dabble too much into the technology development side,” she said. “This has been an awesome opportunity to work through bottom-to-top what that process looks like.”
The five members of the Peregrine team said they spent much of their allotted time planning and researching to help them understand the pain-points and opportunities in the hospitality industry. This approach ultimately helped them bring home first place.
Building skills for the real world
While teams worked on their solution, CodeFest also provided opportunities for students to network with Marriott representatives and to seek guidance from the Marriott team through open office hours. Participants also enjoyed a crash course in presentation skills, led by Alyssa Henderson, an associate director, career pathways and college relations. She coached them on presence, time management, and utilizing the strengths of every team member.
“What they [the students] are experiencing is very similar to what we’re going through in our project planning,” said Oliver Alvarez, Marriott’s vice president of security architecture and engineering who also participated as a judge. “We’re always presenting new ideas or things that we need to do at Marriott, so it’s similar to the formats we’re seeing here at Virginia Tech. You have eight minutes to make your presentation. If you have a demo, what is it? What is the impact?”
Innovations in rewards points, itineraries, and customer experience
Thirty-one teams presented their work to the Marriott judges in the days after the coding window closed. Winners’ projects were judged on their hypothesis, solution framework, cybersecurity considerations, and demonstration.
The third-place winner, Team Innovate, developed a solution that combined the reach of travel influencers on social media with the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to build a personalized travel guide for customers. Soham Patil, who worked on the AI development, said the target audience was Gen Z. “We just thought about it from our own perspectives — how do we want to travel and what are our requirements?”
Second place went to Painter’s Tape, a group that created a digital wallet to help credit card holders maximize their rewards. Features of the platform included the ability to intelligently notify users of opportunities to earn points based on their live location, balance tracking, and alerts when cardholders are approaching key milestones. Spencer Steadman, the team’s lead, said Marriott’s emphasis on the end-user was an eye-opener for him. “Marriott is definitely a brand that cares about its customers, and cares about students as well.”
Embracing Marriott’s approach to bringing value to guests and the company won Team Peregrine’s project, Chariot, the top prize. “If all of our eyes were closed, that could have been a product planning meeting in Bethesda, on any random day of the week, thinking about what's next on our roadmap,” said Clay Hall, Marriott’s senior vice president for enterprise products and CodeFest judge.
Written by Gwen Sheldon
