Finding Smart Solutions for Regional Tourism Issues... Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism & Korea Tourism Organization Host Hackathon Competition

Idea Team 3 and Pilot Project Team 5 Selected
Discovery of Real-Time Video-Based Crowd Density Detection Drone System and More

The government is addressing regional tourism issues with smart ideas from private companies.

Smart Local Tourism Problem-Solving Project Hackathon Site.
Photo by Korea Tourism Organization

On the 5th, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Tourism Organization announced that they held the ‘2024 Smart Regional Tourism Problem-Solving Project Hackathon (hereinafter Hackathon)’ on the 2nd at the SKY31 Convention in Lotte World Tower, Seoul.

A hackathon is a combination of hacking and marathon, where experts from various fields such as software developers, graphic designers, and UI planners gather to generate ideas and produce results within a limited time.

This event, held for the first time this year, was planned to discover various ideas to solve regional tourism problems and select capable private companies to promote a smart tourism pilot project.

Before the project, the organization recruited university (graduate) students (idea discovery category) and private companies (pilot project) to participate in the main project from the 15th to the 24th of last month. A total of 48 teams participated, and 18 teams advanced to the final round.

In the idea discovery category, the ‘Import’ team, which proposed the idea of developing a drone system that detects crowd congestion at tourist sites using real-time video data, received the organization president’s award and a prize of 3 million won. The ‘Plan-It’ team, which submitted an ‘AI-based tourist site recommendation algorithm,’ received the excellence award and a prize of 2 million won, and the ‘Hashtag’ team, which presented a ‘smart travel tag,’ received the encouragement award and a prize of 1 million won, respectively.

Group photo at the Smart Regional Tourism Problem-Solving Project Hackathon site.
[Photo by Korea Tourism Organization]

In the pilot project category, the selected companies were ▲ Bestella Lab Co., Ltd. with a video-based integrated parking information system to solve large festival parking problems (smart parking), ▲ Deepfine Co., Ltd. with an XR spatial information construction solution (smart map), ▲ UDD Co., Ltd. with PayApp, a credit card transaction and QR order solution using smartphones (smart payment), ▲ Peach AI Co., Ltd. with a floating population analysis-based congestion prediction and digital signage advertising performance analysis content delivery service (smart safety), and ▲ Sijeong Co., Ltd. with an outdoor mobile AED kiosk for festival use (free theme).

The companies selected in the pilot project category are scheduled to start developing smart tourism services related to the ‘2024 Gwangju Memories of Chungjang Festival’ and ‘Cheongju Cheongnamdae and Cultural Manufacturing Plant.’

Kim Dong-il, head of the Tourism Industry Division at the Korea Tourism Organization, said, “This project not only discovers ideas but also presents a new blueprint for smart tourism in terms of collaborating with technologically capable private companies to solve regional tourism problems. The organization plans to develop smart tourism services that local residents can experience to help revitalize regional tourism.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.