The NOVA University Lisbon, through the Nova Tourism and Hospitality (TOHO) platform and NOVA Impact, is a partner of the Mind The Tourism program - mind your footprint, mind your health. Launched by NEST - Tourism Innovation Center, this program focuses on encouraging the creation of sustainable innovation solutions in the tourism sector. NOVA conceptualized the program and is organizing several initiatives, with emphasis on the roundtables and the Hackathon. Planetiers, an entity that promotes sustainable change, is also involved in the organization of the program, with a series of talks on opportunities for innovation in tourism.
Mind The Tourism program aims to map opportunities for innovation in tourism and promote the creation of sustainable technological solutions, ready to test in the market. To this end, the program will bring together several stakeholders from the tourism industry around sustainable innovation. SMEs, startups, the academic community, companies and professionals will identify and work on the greatest tourism opportunities around three axes: Sustainability, Safety, Health and Well-being.
The program is divided into two phases. The first phase concerns a set of talks and roundtables, where several priority challenges for tourism will be identified. In a second phase, which corresponds to the Hackathon, the challenges identified will be addressed to develop, in record time, technological solutions. In the end, three solutions will be chosen to be implemented in the market, through pilot projects.
1st phase - Opportunities Debate and Mapping
To inspire the discussion on problems and identify opportunities in the tourism sector, Planetiers will bring together a set of national and international experts who will address the main themes for the future for tourism in a series of talks. European Ecological Pact, Climate Change, Carbon Footprint and Solutions, Big Data for Carbon and Solutions, Circular and Disruptive Solutions and Future Fit Tourism are the themes of these sessions, which will be available from March 15th on NEST's Youtube channel.
In turn, between March 29th and April 9th, NOVA promotes roundtables, which will bring together specialists and entities from the public and private sector related to the sectorial topic under discussion, to make tangible the problems and opportunities associated with the three axes of the program. Among the guests will be representatives of associations and municipalities, companies in the sector, technological startups, individuals of recognized merit, among others, who will share their knowledge and promote the identification of solutions based on data and technology. The themes of the sessions are: Sustainable Mobility in Cities, Healthy and Ecological Restoration, Safe, Healthy and Sustainable Accommodation, Future Events, Cultural and Identity Heritage, Nature and the Ocean. These sessions will be broadcast live on NEST's YouTube channel.
2nd phase - Hackathon
The second phase of the program is a Hackathon between April 30th and May 2nd, for the development of technological solutions for the opportunities mapped in talks and roundtables. This phase of the program will have the support of NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS), NOVA Medical School, Turismo de Portugal, Lisbon City Hall, NOS and Brisa - Via Verde.
Applications for the Hackathon will open on March 29th on the program's website.
All the initiatives of Mind The Tourism program are free to access and take place online.