SCALING AND FUNDING TOURISM THROUGH TECHNOLOGY, OUR IDEAS.
Africa has huge potentials for Tourism through their youthful population but is still struggling with an uncharted and uncoordinated roadmap to achieve huge windfalls from that sector. Experts have advised on how to reconstruct the Tourism ecosystem in Africa through Technology by identifying challenges and opportunities.
Emerging Startups and an SME Ecosystem could just be the trigger needed for the role in redefining Tourism in Africa as a whole.
Our role at TOURISM AND TECHNOLOGY HACKATHON SUMMIT is to develop a hub for this emerging innovations and provide a platform to showcase these innovations to the world and by extension invite venture capitalists and equity investors to have a buy in into some of these innovations.
The primary aim for this community would be to engender solutions to numerous problems facing the tourism sector in Africa and how it can be easier to deploy technology to solve these problems.
MISSION
- To provide young entrepreneurs with a platform to foster their offerings in a world where tourism is presenting veritable opportunities for innovations.
- To establish a framework for the creation, transfer and application of applications, solutions and packages to help expand growth in the tourism industry.
- To connect with interest groups and form part of a network to create innovative strategies for
product and experience development within tourism circles.
- To encourage the mutual benefits of tourism and rapid development for big and disruptive technologies for creative minds across board around Africa.
- To provide a space for members to collaborate on matters of policy formation, innovation and
branding initiatives, and other public-private partnerships which can enhance the offerings for tourism.
- To promote innovation and encourage ICT and smart tourism initiatives such as virtual tourist
guide applications, augmented reality applications,location connectors apps, hotels identification pins, and Wi-Fi ready cities across Africa.
VISION
The UNWTO Global Code of Ethics for Tourism (GCET) serves as the fundamental frame of reference
for all the initiatives of the organisations promoting responsible and sustainable tourism including
the travel industry, communities and tourists alike, this comprehensive set of principles aims to help maximize the sector’s benefits while minimizing its potentially negative impact on the environment, cultural heritage and societies across the globe.
Likewise, the UN Agenda for 2030 is a plan of action for people, the planet and prosperity.
It also seeks to encourage global peace. It recognizes that eradicating poverty in all its forms and
dimensions is the greatest global challenge and a requirement for sustainable development. All
countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan.
Our vision therefore is to key into the above strategy through the TOURISM AND TECHNOLOGY HACKATHON SUMMIT and become an enabler of new technologies that would aid in the growth and sustainability of the Tourism industry in Africa.
THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ON TOURISM
The WTD (World Tourism Day) 2018 theme centred on Tourism and the digital transformation.This theme was what inspired our vision to build a new ecosystem for tourism in Africa using Technology as a Launch pad.In social terms, digitalization is expected to continue propelling the travel experience on its trajectory towards becoming more seamless, frictionless, and high quality.The use of technologies including the ‘Internet of Things’, location-based services, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, and blockchain technology has resulted in a tourism offer that is more attractive, efficient, inclusive, and economically, socially and environmentally sustainable than its predecessor. It has also facilitated innovation and rethinking of processes, with a view to tackling challenges such as seasonality and overcrowding and developing smarter destinations.
Digitalization has a positive environmental impact and can yet have a greater one, with innovations in manufacturing, smart assets and efficient use of resources contributing to a more sustainable industry footprint.
Some major impacts on the sector as a whole are the development of smart travel facilitation, smart destinations, and a new wave of job profiles.