Entries open for Africa's first travel hackathon

Image source: Gallo/Getty

#TrainTourHack will consist of 20 teams of coders, designers and data scientists who will work on practical technological solutions for the tourism industry for approximately 36 hours. With the guidance of mentors and seasoned travel influencers, the teams will work on developing solutions to tourism challenges around tourist safety, SMME digital enablement and niche markets. The winning team will be funded to develop their solution(s) further.

"This hackathon is the first of its kind in this market. And we are excited to be at forefront of revolutionising tourism to catch up with the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) with the aim of also collecting and storing accurate industry data," says Phaka Hlazo, managing director at Zulu Nomad.

"Tour operators and accommodation providers, largely small businesses who create experiences and host travellers need reliable data around who is travelling exactly, where they are going, what they do when they get there, and how long do they stay. This kind of data would transform the domestic travel industry by allowing for the creation of new tourism products, and more importantly, new jobs in this sector."

"This kind of data is not available locally, however, we have international partners who do have real-time access to rich data on inbound travellers into South Africa who use their apps. This is why Geekulcha and BrowSense Insights are embarking on this project we want to explore the technology tools available to us. We also want to empower techies to build innovative solutions for the domestic travel market from which we can then start producing the data so desperately needed to grow this sector."

Entry details:

Teams can choose from five categories to base their project on the following:

• Accommodation,
• Experience,
• Logistics,
• Tours and
• Attractions and travel medium.

Registration closes on 15 August 2019.