Calling for Traditional Tourism SMEs to participate in EU DigiTOUR Hackathon

Deadline: 15 January 2024

The EU DigiTOUR is calling for traditional tourism SMEs who are eager to embark on a journey, implementing digital technologies (AR/VR; IoT; Big Data; and AI) to elevate their business.

The Hackathon events will be celebrated in person in Croatia, Italy, and Germany. The events will be celebrated in a hybrid way (in presence at local level + online). The Hackathons are designed as an open events and will be open to any EU member’s citizens to encourage multi-cultural, cross-industry collaboration that breeds creativity.

The hackathons will be open to EU tourism SMEs, EU tourism innovative SMEs – as digital Champions, but ultimately to startups from any market vertical, investors, PA, academia and research centres and the general public.

Companies should operate in tourism and must have an interest in developing and integrating innovative solutions at their premises based on the following digital technologies:

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR)
Internet of Things (IoT)
Big Data
A mix of them all

Selected tourism SMEs will be admitted to the Hackathons following an application through the Good Grant platform based on their elaboration of their need to implement an innovative solution based on the digital technologies.

The scope is to select at least 45 tourism SMEs in total to participate in the three local hackathons celebrated in Italy, Germany and Slovenia.

During the hackathons, tourism SMEs will have to team up with the EU DigiTOUR Digital Champions from the High Growth Transformation Programme and hack together the best solution based on the tourism SMEs’ needs.

At the end of the Hackathon celebration, 30 tourism SMEs will receive a financial support for up to EUR 10,000.00.

Eligibility Criteria

In order to participate in the EU DigiTOUR Hackathon, all three compulsory requirements to participate must be met:
- To be a Small or Medium Enterprise (SME) as in EU recommendation 2003/361
- To be a legally established tourism SMEs and its main economic activity is in the tourism sector as reflected in their NACE codes:
  - Hotels and similar accommodation
  - Holiday and other short-stay accommodation
  - Camping grounds, recreational vehicle parks and trailer parks
  - Travel agency, tour operator reservation service and related activities
- Be registered in
  - Italy
  - Germany
  - Croatia
  - Slovenia