The team that created a machine learning tool for forecasting data for managers of tourism companies, Hotel California, was the winner of the Hackathon Mind The Tourism award, which represents the culmination of a series of initiatives organized by NOVA University Lisbon with the objective of encouraging the creation of sustainable innovation solutions in the tourism sector. Launched by NEST - Tourism Innovation Center, the Mind The Tourism - mind your footprint, mind your health programme has NOVA as a partner through the Nova Tourism and Hospitality (TOHO) platform and NOVA Impact.
After a set of talks and roundtables, where priority challenges for tourism were identified, the Mind The Tourism programme - mind your footprint, mind your health entered its last phase, called Hackathon, with a view to developing technological solutions, in record time , for the identified challenges. The marathon, which ran from April 30th to May 2nd and brought together 75 participants from 9 nationalities, had three finalists.
In addition to Hotel California, which took the podium, in second place was Mosey, a marketplace that aims to connect people to culture, providing more pleasant experiences through an intelligent queue management format. The third place was taken by EcoWayLX, an application to help people select and organize alternative travel experiences, by consulting environmental impact information, as well as defining healthier options for a given route.
The project by Nøytrall, a team that developed a carbon emissions calculator to measure the impact of travel by tourist, and the project The Green Journey Challenge, a gamified system to encourage more efficient use of water and energy, were also distinguished.
In total, the Hackathon attracted more than 180 people from the community from industry experts, SMEs, startups, academics, companies and professionals. Organized jointly with Planetiers, an entity that promotes sustainable change, the Mind The Tourism - mind your footprint, mind your health program stands out for having brought together several stakeholders in the tourism industry around sustainable innovation with a view to identify and work on the greatest tourism opportunities around three axes: Sustainability, Safety, Health and Well-Being.