Cheapy - AI Hotel Finder

Overview

Cheapy aggregates hotel listings from 100+ booking platforms and uses AI to surface the best-value options based on the user's budget, dates, and trip type. The goal is to save travelers the manual work of tab-switching across sites — one search, ranked results, actionable price alerts.

What It Does

• Searches across 100+ booking platforms in a single query and ranks results by value, not just price
• AI recommendations tailored to budget, location preferences, and trip type (business, leisure, family)
• Price alerts that notify users when saved hotels drop in cost
• SEO-driven travel guides and booking tips blog to drive organic traffic

Technical Stack

• Frontend: Next.js 14, React 18, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
• Backend: .NET 8, ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework Core
• Search: Elasticsearch for fast, scalable hotel discovery
• Caching: Redis for high-frequency queries and frequently accessed data
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Deployment: Docker, CI/CD with GitHub Actions

My Role

I built the backend API layer and search infrastructure. That meant integrating third-party hotel data sources, writing the price comparison and ranking logic, and optimizing Elasticsearch queries to hit sub-second response times under load. The caching strategy with Redis was critical — without it, aggregating live data from dozens of sources would have been too slow to feel usable.