The initiative is designed to spark the creation and development of new commercial applications in travel and foster entrepreneurship among developer, designer and student communities in Asia and beyond.

Supported by OpenTravel Alliance, and to be facilitated by Timothy O’Neil-Dunne of VaultPAD, an accelerator for travel start-ups, and industry insider Filip Filipov on behalf of WIT, the Challenge will invite travel sponsors to set a specific challenge or pain point in their business to be solved.

Yeoh Siew Hoon

Teams of developers, designers and students can pick the challenge they want to take on and submit their solutions to a panel of judges to be assembled by WIT. Finalists will have the opportunity to showcase their solutions at the WIT Bootcamp on October 21 in Singapore. Winners will be declared that day and go on to showcase their winning entries at the main WIT Conference, October 22-23 ,which is attended by more than 500 industry travel leaders in travel distribution, marketing and technology

Winners of the respective Challenges will win a three-month “mentoring” or “incubation” period with the sponsors to undergo a Proof of Concept. Commercialisation terms, if any, are to be determined on a private basis between the individual sponsors and teams.

“We wanted to introduce the idea of a Challenge in which specific pain points are set by travel companies and developers and designers can then work on and solve actual problems,” said Yeoh Siew Hoon, editor and founder of WIT. “We also wanted to ensure that those who take part get tangible benefits out of it and that sponsors are committed to giving their solutions a trial, and both parties can then take it from there.

“Our role is to facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship, to bring new talent into our industry and to match talent with the right travel companies.”

Currently sponsors include Abacus Ventures and Travelport International. The competition will feature up to five different Challenges.

Valyn Perini

“Educating new entrants to travel about this industry is a natural role for a standards body supported by and serving the travel industry,” said Valyn Perini, CEO of OpenTravel. .

“Supporting initiatives like this one allows us to more closely interact with both budding entrepreneurs and those established travel companies that want to support and foster innovation. We are really pleased to work with Web in Travel on this venture.”

A Call For Entries will be issued early August and a webinar is scheduled for August 9, 4pm Singapore time, in which sponsors will explain their Challenge to interested participants. There will be three categories of winners – Challenge Winner, Judges’ Choice & Student Choice.