ENTER21 Innovation Challenge

Theme: ICT for Sustainability and eQuality

ENTER21 Innovation Challenge

Theme: ICT for Sustainability and eQuality

Motivation

The COVID-19 crisis has brutally revealed the vulnerability of tourism – in digital and analogue life. The most of it has been centering on a rather pure capitalistic view of revenue maximization and never-ending growth paradigm – despite all the warning signs. Information and communication technologies (ICT) have mainly been seen as means to achieve those goals and less to following principles like sustainability, equality and transparency. The tourism sphere strongly needs to critically reflect current patterns and practices. ICT shows strong potentials to support the necessary transformation process.

Objective

The IFITT Innovation Challenge aims to generate innovative ideas and conceptual solutions with the theme ICT for Sustainability and eQuality. Interdisciplinary teams of students from all over the globe are invited to engage in an innovation process, encouraged and supported by eTourism and sustainability experts from the academia and the travel and tourism industry. The best ideas and most innovative concepts should show the potential to transform tourism to a more sustainable, mindful and reflecting business domain, which provides income and saves resources.

Concept

This student challenge is implemented by the International Federation for Information Technology and Travel & Tourism (IFITT) and tourism industry partners from hospitality, transportation, destinations, tour operators, etc.

Participating teams are requested to submit their innovative idea and concept together with a demonstrator, which should be in form of a mock-up, screenplay, or interface prototype. All teams are expected to submit their proposal as a PowerPoint presentation and a video-recorded pitch. The maximum length of the video recording is 5 minutes.

A jury of eTourism and sustainability experts with representatives of industry partners will select the most compelling ideas. The top 5 concepts will be invited to be presented online during the ENTER21 @yourplace. The winning teams will be selected and announced on www.enter-conference.org and promoted via tourism media and social media channels. A free IFITT membership of two years for the members of the best 2 teams will be given as further support.

Registration is free of charge for all student teams. Several teams from one University can participate.

Target Audience

Eligible to participate are student teams of any size (we recommend a team size of 5-7 members). Students of all disciplines are welcome and to form interdisciplinary teams is explicitly recommended. All team members have to be registered at an institution of higher education, certified (or officially confirmed) by their supervising professor.

Mentors for Innovation Challenge 21

We are very pleased and excited to announce that the mentors for this year’s Challenge have been selected. They are:

Mentor-Company: Amadeus:

  • Lucas Bobes, Head of Sustainability, Industry Affairs, Amadeus IT Group SA
  • Sven Hafner, Senior Product Manager Technology and Innovation, Amadeus Airport IT GmbH

Mentoring-Team: GEN – Global Ecotourism Network:

Mentor-Company: Outdooractive GmbH:

They will introduce themselves briefly and talk about their problem/selected challenge and explain it on November 2nd in the Kick Off for the registered student teams.

Jury for Innovation Challenge 21

Currently 11 teams are working on your ideas and are accompanied by three mentors. We wish all teams good luck and an exciting cooperation!

We are pleased to present the jury of the ENTER21 Innovation Challenge
Theme: ICT for Sustainability and eQuality

The jury is made up of the supervisors of the respective universities which are the co-organizers, the mentors and three colleagues from the IFITT Board, who are recognized for their expertise in this year’s theme.

Supervisors

  • Prof. Dr. Wolfram Höpken, University of Applied Sciences Ravensburg-Weingarten
  • Prof. Dr. Claudia C. Brözel, University for Sustainable Development, Eberswalde
  • Prof. Dr. Conny Mayer-Bonde, Dual University Baden Württemberg, Ravensburg

Mentors

  • Sven Hafner, Senior Product Manger Technology and Innovation, Amadeus Airport IT GmbH
  • Kirsi Hyvaerinen, GEN Board Member, Finland/Montenegro
  • Dominik Huber, Research Manager, Outdooractive GmbH

IFITT Board

  • Zheng Xiang, President IFITT
  • Juho Pesonen, Director of Research Excellence
  • Cihan Cobanoglu, Vice President IFITT

The Supervisor and the Mentors are excluded from the evaluation of the teams they supervised.

What’s next?

  • On 15th January the select 5 best candidates, nominated for the ENTER21 Innovation Challenge Award – will be announced here on the ENTER Website
  • On 21th January 4 pm CET (Mainhall) the 5 candidates will present their ideas and the review committee and ENTER21 participants choose the winning teams.

Industry sponsorship and mentoring program

Tourism industry partners, destinations and organisations can become part of a sponsoring and mentoring program. As mentors, these partners will help stimulate and coach the idea generation process, based on their experience and knowledge in their respective tourism subdomain. Each team of students is assigned to one mentor and will receive general guidance and early feedback during their innovation process, including the preparation phase of the selected team presentations before ENTER21.

Finalists & Winner of Innovation Challenge 21

All submissions have been evaluated by a jury of experts in eTourism and eSustainablity and the five best ideas have been selected as finalists. We proudly present the finalists of the ENTER21 Innovation Challenge in alphabetic order:

  • AirTouch: Dijana Adzaga, René Delle, David Mehner, Julian Scherer
  • LocalsFromZero: Lucija Drnovšček, Jaka Godejsa, Rudi Medved, Tadej Rogelja
  • NaStories: Fabian Knoll, Wiktor Szalanski
  • The Round Table: Lukas Freitag, Felix Fröhlich
  • Ultramarin: Lisa Kahlert, Maren Kraus, Stefan Maucher, Lara Pfau, Luca Zentgraf

The finalists presented their innovative ideas and concepts on ENTER21 and the jury selected the winning team. The winner and first place of the ENTER21 Innovation Challenge is awared to:

  • The Round Table: Lukas Freitag, Felix Fröhlich

We congratulate all finalists and the winners and thank all teams for presenting their fascinating and compelling ideas on ENTER21.

co-organized by

Institut für digitalen Wandel Ravensburg-Weingarten University of Applied Sciences
Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg
Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development