The Digital Zone is already hosting six finalist teams in the open innovation challenge for Tourism. This initiative, launched by the Generalitat’s technological center and the Ministry of Innovation, seeks to accelerate the modernization of the tourism sector. The venture has reached its final stage, and once these six firms complete on-site development, they will run pilot tests tailored for the tourism ecosystem in the Community of Valencia and will also explore opportunities in national and international markets.
Specifically, the first six startups to settle in the Digital Zone as part of this challenge include incident casea, a technology company that focuses on promoting events in tourism; vanyoua, a caravan rental platform; tourism intelligence, a consultancy specializing in tourism strategies and DTI certification; Optimize, offering tech solutions for tourism marketing and data management; silver block, active in the NFT and Blockchain space for culture and events; and Y tourisminnovacion360, a provider of virtual and augmented reality services for the tourism industry.
Digital Zone launched last year three open innovation programs centered on Tourism, Health, and climate change prevention as a strategy to attract talent and projects from local and international sources. This commitment also fostered the exchange of technological knowledge among companies and other participants in the project, while giving the Valencia ecosystem broader international visibility within their respective sectors.
In the special case of the Tourism Zone program, support comes from Joint Venture Globaldit-barrabes.biz, underscoring a collaborative framework that aligns with current regional and global innovation networks.
The initial stages of the program included the definition of four distinctive challenges, created in collaboration with Mastercard, Pangea, Nateevo, and ForwardKeys. These were designed in partnership with the four major companies involved and were selected from a pool of 506 industry-focused firms worldwide, with 87 of those firms enrolling in the program.
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About 38% of all contacted candidates came from foreign markets, and 87% of those originated within the European Union, highlighting a strong international interest. In terms of sector distribution, 45% of registered applications represented tourism-focused enterprises, with 14% concentrating on travel services and 11% on smart city initiatives.
The selection process continued to identify candidate companies and initiatives that could best address emerging challenges, leading to the final list of finalist projects destined to pilot their solutions and measure impact over the coming months. The aim is to demonstrate tangible benefits and scalable models that can be replicated beyond the initial pilot phase.
Following the summer term, additional startups with an international footprint, also part of the Tourism challenge, are anticipated to relocate to the Digital Zone to advance their projects within the technology center, further strengthening the region’s innovation ecosystem and its capacity to attract global attention.