Deadline: February 28, 2021
Applications are invited for the UNWTO 3rd Global Gastronomy Tourism Start-Up Competition 2021. The mission of the competition is to identify challenges and projects, and catalyzing innovations that can transform the Gastronomy Tourism sector in the near future.
The projects will be divided into three categories:
- New Technologies: Startups that are developing and promoting a startup with a high technological component to provide solutions or new services related to the Gastronomic Tourism sector.
- Local Impact: Startups that are developing and promoting a project with a high component of transformation and social improvement in its area of implementation and that are attached to the Gastronomic Tourism sector.
- Sustainability and Waste Management: Startups that are developing and promoting a project with a high component of sustainability and/or food waste management related to the impact generated by tourists.
Benefits
- Mentoring by UNWTO and top partners
- Tailored support for your startup
- Investment opportunities
- Form part of the UNWTO Innovation Network
- Scholarship opportunities for the Tourism Online Academy
- Opportunity to present your startup at the 7th UNWTO Gastronomy Tourism Forum (Nara, Japan June 2022)
- Use of a space in the LABe- Digital Gastronomy Lab facilities for 6 months.
- Participate as a finalist company in the corresponding edition of Culinary Action! – On the road, the first foodtech startup competition in roadshow format.
- Advanced Plan of the GOe Digital Community for 6 months, which is the first digital community within the 360º gastronomy sector.
Eligibility
- This competition is aimed at all those projects that are at an early stage of development and that respond to one of the categories covered by this competition.
- Open to all entrepreneurs, whether natural or legal persons, of legal age and with legal capacity to bind themselves.
- The projects must be aligned with the objectives of Sustainable Development framed by the United Nations and with the introduction of technological elements, and framed in one (or several) of the following areas:
- The management of destinations or private management of solutions/products/services developed around and gastronomy as gastronomic tourism products.
- The configuration of the offer seeking a balance between sustainable development and profitability of the project, maximizing its positive impacts.
- The connection with the market and the user experience at all stages of the journey.
Criteria
- Scope into the Gastronomy Tourism Sector
- Innovation: Degree of comparative disruptiveness / innovation in the sector (global level); not technological component required.
- Social Impact of the Start-up: Focused on meeting unmet social needs in different realms, to foster employability of young and/or vulnerable people, depopulation of the territory, population aging and/or gender equality; and with tangible indicators to that effect.
- Traction: Capacity to transform the localized environment; ability to generate a change in society, improving the social conditions of the beneficiary groups and / or promoting their recognition before society.
- A tested MVP: product or service prototype, tested and tested, with already measured or measurable results.
- Potential impact of the business: potential scalability/financial return and/or development of competitive advantages for the business in the short-medium term.
- Ease of value capture via collaboration with the Start-up: agile implementation in the short-medium term for co-development of products/services, optimizing the use of existing resources/infrastructure and ability to scale the product.
- Committed team. Team with explicit knowledge about the area of action; positive assessment of the endorsement of a public or private organization on the execution of the project
- Adherence to the Sustainable Development Goals: Linking and tangible social impact metrics in relation to the priority SDG.
Application
The deadline for submission of projects began on November 2, 2021 and will end at 00:00h CET on February 28, 2022.
For more information, visit UNWTO.
