Moscow Travel Hack, the first hackathon devoted to digitalizing the tourism sector was organized by Moscow’s Tourism Committee.
Moscow hosted the final of the world’s first hackathon on the digitalization of the tourism industry, the ‘Moscow Travel Hack’. Several teams competed against one another to solve a task set by Russian and international partners, inspired by the everyday challenges they face as a company. Final projects were presented to a jury on 9th February, to select the winning team, who shared a cash prize of 1.1 million rubles.
Moscow Travel Hack, the first hackathon devoted to digitalizing the tourism sector was organized by Moscow’s Tourism Committee together with 10 Russian and international partners, including Facebook, Amazon Web Services, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and Discover.Moscow portal.
“Tourism is one of the industries where technical solutions must be not only effective, but also convenient from the point of view of the end user. Moreover, developers need to remember that tourists from all over the world will use their application or service – and for each of them the product should be simple and clear. This is an important factor that experts paid attention to when determining the winners of the hackathon,” said Eduard Lysenko, head of the Department of Information Technology.
One of the partners – the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts – was inviting the participants to come up with a software solution for a virtual voice guide to the museum, while another – Facebook – was looking for a solution to improve the process of planning or seeking travel options.
On the hackathon were presented such solutions as individual touristic activities planning, automatic processing of the pictures, automatization of the tickets buying.
Hackathons help to find new ideas and ways of developing specific areas of business. Teams with readymade projects in the relevant areas offered their solutions to the partners and presented them separately at the hackathon. As a result, Moscow’s tourism portal Discover.Moscow wants to create an online service for communication between tourists coming to Moscow and residents of the city.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
