Tourism Technology Festival: 20 Teams Hack for 24 Hours to Reinvent Tourism

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24 hours for the idea, two minutes for the pitch: at the Tourism Technology Festival in Salzburg, teams had to build digital solutions for tourism at top speed and sell them even faster.

The fourth edition of the hackathon took place last weekend as part of the “Alles für den Gast” trade fair at Messezentrum Salzburg. Around 100 participants from technology, tourism, design and business worked on prototypes in more than 20 teams. The festival was co-hosted by Dialogschmiede and USECON and initiated by the Austrian National Tourist Office (Österreich Werbung), which was also the main sponsor.

Six Problems From the Real World

The challenges came directly from companies and organizations in the tourism industry. Teams were asked to find solutions for six problems:

• Off-season: How can existing data show where the potential lies in the off-season?
• Hotel data: How can hotels analyze their data more efficiently and use it for decisions?
• Accessibility: How can information on the accessibility of tourism offerings be captured reliably and kept up to date?
• Overnight stays: How can key figures be turned into clear, actionable insights?
• AI assistants: How must tourism information be prepared so that AI applications can find it?
• Booking: How can a family vacation spread across four booking systems become a seamless digital experience?

The common thread: tourism usually has enough data, but it is scattered across different systems and rarely connected. The AI assistant challenge also shows that hotels and destinations are increasingly concerned with how they show up in answers from ChatGPT and similar tools.

The Winners

After the two-minute pitches, an expert jury assessed creativity, the quality of the solution and its value for guests, businesses and destinations. A total of €6,000 in prize money was awarded:

• 1st place: Tourinators (€3,000)
• 2nd place: Patamausis (€2,000)
• 3rd place: Hackaton Veterans (€1,000)

“More than 20 teams showed within just 24 hours what is possible when different skills, new perspectives and real challenges come together,” says Sabine Gross of Dialogschmiede. The challenge partners are now set to take the ideas and approaches back to their organizations. Talks about continuing the festival next year are already underway.