UN Tourism Artificial Intelligence Challenge

With AI and advanced technologies reshaping the travel industry, 2024 presents a key moment to redefine tourism. As international travel reaches full recovery, the challenge focuses on using AI to improve personalized services, streamline operations, and elevate customer engagement, delivering scalable solutions that bring measurable results.

Objectives

• Innovate: Support AI-driven solutions that enhance efficiency and transform traveler experiences across the tourism ecosystem.
• Adopt: Ensure AI adoption is equitable, providing access to all communities and fostering widespread participation and benefits from these technologies.
• Drive Growth: Foster AI solutions that optimize operations and improve service delivery, benefiting stakeholders across the industry.
• Collaborate: Unify governments, industries, and experts to advance AI’s role in addressing tourism’s key challenges.
• Shape the Future: Use AI to meet user demands, from optimizing logistics to enhancing the visitor experience, reinforcing tourism as a driver of economic growth.

Categories

• Branding, Promotion & Marketing
  • Elevating Brand Value: Reputation, Branding & Marketing Focus on enhancing destination branding and promotion through the use of AI and deep technologies. This category emphasizes innovative solutions that not only boost brand value but also promote sustainable practices, preserve cultural heritage, and improve the visitor experience, all while maintaining global appeal and authenticity.
• Smart Destinations & Deep Technologies
  • Integrated Tech for Smart Destinations: Creating Cohesive Experiences Harness integrated technologies to create seamless and sustainable visitor experiences at smart destinations. This category targets innovations that optimize destination management, improving operational efficiency and sustainability through AI, green and deep tech solutions, while elevating the quality of the tourist experience.
• Education & Technology
  • EdTech for Tourism: Empowering Sustainable futures Utilize AI and digital platforms to enhance education and training in the tourism sector. This category focuses on fostering professional development and sustainable career paths, equipping tourism professionals with the skills needed to implement eco-friendly practices and support long-term sustainable tourism growth.
• Efficiency & Operations
  • Tourism Flow Management & Cross-Border Efficiency Leverage AI and deep technologies to manage tourism flows and improve cross-border travel efficiency. This category emphasizes solutions that use data analytics to balance visitor distribution, minimize environmental impacts, and enhance the overall quality of visitor experiences, while ensuring secure and seamless travel operations.

Benefits

• Benefits for winning startups include but are not limited to:
  • Pitch at the UN TOURISM Demo Day
  • Acceleration Programme at SPARK, the Innovation Sphere of Les Roches
  • Access to 90+ Venture Capitalists
  • Access to Top Corporations and 150+ Countries
  • Curated mentorship programmes
  • Potential pilot project with private sector collaborators and institutions
  • Plug and Play will offer a registered profile on Playbook, an invitation to participate in their Silicon Valley Summit, and access to talent and synergies with their Portfolio

Eligibility Criteria

• The UN Tourism AI & Deep Tech Start-up & Scale-Up Challenge is strategically aimed at start up & scale-ups that have already demonstrated significant potential in the tourism or technology sectors and are poised for their next stage of growth. These are companies that have moved beyond the initial startup phase, with proven business models, established customer bases, and a track record of innovation. The target scale-ups should meet the following criteria:
  • Technological Innovation and Readiness
    • Proven Technological Readiness: Demonstrated deployment of advanced, AI-driven or emerging technologies that are market-ready and address real-world challenges.
    • `Ethical AI and Compliance: Adherence to international regulations like GDPR, focusing on data security and ethical AI practices.
  • Market Validation and Business Viability
    • Sustainable Business Model: a strong strategy to minimize risk and the capability to sustainably expand operations.
    • Growth Stage with Market Traction: Strong market presence with proven revenue streams, demonstrating customer demand and effective solutions to real-world applications.
    • Financial Stability: Robust financial backing and stability to support long-term growth.
  • Global Reach and Scalability
    • Global Scalability and Adaptability: Vision and readiness to scale solutions globally, with the ability to customize them for diverse geographic and regulatory environments.
    • Collaboration Readiness: Engagement in strategic partnerships and multi-stakeholder collaborations to advance responsible AI use in tourism.
  • Sustainability and Social Impact
    • Commitment to Sustainability: Dedication to practices that support environmental conservation and contribute to the SDGs.
    • Social Impact and Inclusivity: Technologies that promote inclusivity, enhancing accessibility and cultural exchange.
    • Impact Measurement and Reporting: Systems for measuring and reporting the impact of their solutions on sustainability and SDGs.

Assessment Criteria

• Participating startups will be assessed according to their:
  • Ease of value capture
  • Scalability
  • Potential business impact
  • Maturity of the product/technology
  • Maturity of the team and the organization
  • Partnership readiness
  • Contribution to the selected Sustainable Development Goals.

For more information, visit UN Tourism.