This year’s World Tourism Day on 27 September places importance on harnessing innovation and digital advances to improve tourism effects, plus a startup contest seeks to celebrate clever ideas that will lead the transformation of the tourism sector.

Madrid, Spain, 17 July 2018. The importance of digital technologies in tourism, providing opportunities for innovation and preparing the sector for the future of work, is at the centre of World Tourism Day 2018, to be celebrated in Budapest, Hungary (27 September 2018).

World Tourism Day, celebrated every 27 September around the world, is a unique opportunity to raise awareness on tourism’s actual and potential contribution to sustainable development.

This year’s World Tourism Day (WTD) will help to put the opportunities provided to tourism by technological advances including big data, artificial intelligence and digital platforms, on the map of sustainable development. The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) sees digital advances and innovation as part of the solution to the challenge of marrying continued growth with a more sustainable and responsible tourism sector.

“Harnessing innovation and digital advances provides tourism with opportunities to improve inclusiveness, local community empowerment and efficient resource management, amongst other objectives within the wider sustainable development agenda”, said UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili.

The WTD official celebration will be held in Budapest, Hungary, a country enjoying steady growth of tourism backed by consistent policy support and a commitment to the digital future. Other celebrations will take place worldwide.

The official celebration will also see the announcement of the semi-finalists of the 1st UNWTO Tourism Startup Competition, launched by UNWTO and Globalia to give visibility to startups with innovative ideas capable of revolutionizing the way we travel and enjoy tourism.

World Tourism Organization and Globalia announce the first and largest worldwide competition for tourism startups

This pioneering initiative for the tourism sector reaches out to 164 countries to find startups aiming to transform tourism.

Whether tech-based or non-technological, early-stage or more mature, any startup with innovative ideas capable of revolutionizing the way we travel and enjoy tourism is welcome to participate.

The tourism sector took a giant step into the future. The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), in partnership with Globalia, the leading tourism group in Spain and Latin America, announced the launch of the 1st UNWTO Tourism Startup Competition. It is the world’s first and largest initiative devoted to identifying new companies that will lead the transformation of the tourism sector. In order to find the best projects, the call for competitors will be launched in 164 countries.

The objective of the programme is to select the best solutions and the most disruptive projects. The search will focus on finding pioneering proposals for implementation of emerging and disruptive technologies, as well as on startups based on new business models, such as the circular economy. In this regard, one of the pillars of this competition is to give visibility to projects that are committed to enhancing sustainability in tourism.

The startup search process is as ambitious as it is complex: identifying the best projects in all corners of the planet. For this, UNWTO and Globalia have enlisted the innovation consultancy firm Barrabés.biz, which boasts more than 20 years’ experience in the creation, connection and activation of entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems.

To broaden the scope of the competition and to facilitate the registration of interested startups, the programme will be implemented through the digital platform YouNoodle, a leading Silicon Valley company in the startup evaluation space at the global level.

“Innovation and tourism investment are not ends in themselves; they are means to develop better tourism products, to improve the governance of tourism and to make the most of the proven sustainability of tourism, by creating jobs and generating opportunities," said UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili.

For his part, Globalia CEO Javier Hidalgo confirmed his company’s support for this new initiative emphasizing that “as a global tourism group, we want to offer the winners the opportunity to work with us and transform the sector together”.

Who can participate?

To participate in this global competition, startups must present business models that are related to at least one of four main areas:

·       The future of travel

·       The tourism experience

·       Environmental impact

·       Community development

Those interested in participating can find more information and submit their applications through the programme's website at www.tourismstartups.org. Applications are open from 26 June to 3 September 2018. The projects will be evaluated according to five criteria: uniqueness and viability of the solution, potential impact, business model, scalability and team profile. A jury will evaluate the entries and select the best projects as semi-finalists to be announced in September 2018.

The winners of this competition will have the opportunity to be part of the leading companies in the tourism sector.