The future of AI as a tool in travel and travel planning might be closer than we think.
The RouteStack Build Challenge has opened registration to developers worldwide. The rules are simple: build a working AI travel agent in the next 29 days, and win a 7-night resort stay.
Submissions will be due June 29th and will be judged during a presentation to a three-person panel. Judges will be rating the AI travel agents based on usefulness, originality, technical execution and the presentation itself.
“The developers building agentic infrastructure today are making decisions that will define travel commerce for years,” said Pete Comeau, managing director at Phocuswright, which co-sponsors the RouteStack Build challenge through PhocusWire.
The AI travel agent must be able to book users’ resorts, restaurants, tours, or anything else they might request be a part of their vacation. This stipulation is a part of the challenge because of how the purpose of AI travel agents has changed over the years. For a while, AI travel agents have really just been “chatbot demos,” machines that could plan out a vacation aligning to personal tastes, but have struggled when actually trying to book and pay for reservations themselves. The ultimate goal of this competition is to find a solution which could make AI travel agents both more capable and more commonly used in planning vacations.
There is over $13,400 in prizes for the competition, with the first-place winner receiving a gift certificate towards a 7-night stay at the resort of their choice (selected from one of the resorts on a catalog). The first place winner will also receive $1,000 in RouteStack API credits, and a one-year membership for RouteStack’s Insider Trader Club. Overall, the entire first-place prize is valued at over $3,000.
Second place will receive the same 7-night resort gift certificate, and one-year membership for RouteStack’s Insider Trader Club, with $500 in RouteStack API credits. Third place will receive $1,000 in RouteStack API credits, and a one-year membership for RouteStack’s Insider Trader Club. Places 4-18 will receive $200 in RouteStack API credits.
Built on the 30-year legacy of Custom Travel Solutions, RouteStack provides developers with a single Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoint for booking flights, hotels, and rental cars. The platform handles all payment processing via Stripe and fully manages merchant-of-record liabilities. Notably, developers earn a commission on every booking their AI agents generate. This revenue-sharing model is highly unique among travel APIs, making RouteStack the only vendor in the market to offer commissions on rental car bookings.
Registration for the competition opened on May 25th; with the contest officially kicking off on June 8th. Submissions will close on June 29th and the winner will be officially announced on July 10th.
