HOTUSA cooperates with Sonar Ventures to do these Challenge Weekends (Madrid was the 2nd version of this, after Barcelona last year).  They aim to identify potential ideas to incorporate in their operations or found new ventures the goal is to foster innovation in new ways for HOTUSA. Maud Crettex and Sven Siat, both IMBAs (IE Business School) September ’16 intake were each part of one team at the challenge. 

What was the challenge about?

• innovation in the hospitality and tourism industries
• one weekend, 9 teams of around 5 people
• participants were chosen from more than 150 applications based on their background and motivation
• teams were mixed to include different backgrounds (hospitality, business, marketing, technichal)
• goal was to go from idea to MVP from Friday to Sunday using the lean startup method
• HOTUSA presented five important trends currently influencing the hospitality
• Artificial Intelligence
• Virtual and Argumenten Reality
• Contextual Commerce
• Big Data
• Social Travel

The teams had half a day to brainstorm and select an idea. After that the ideas were grouped and prioritised with guidance of experience mentors. The final idea (or ideas) was detailed our using the business model canvas. At that point, the teams were asked to prepare a pitch and if possible an MVP (Mockup App, Video, etc.). Finally on Sunday the teams pitched their idea to representatives of HOTUSA and selected jurors (among them Professor Joe Haslam of IE). The main purpose of the challenge.

Maud and her team addressed the Social traveler trend proposing a app for discovering cities through gasification. Sven and his team proposed a Snooze Button for the hotel room for late checkout to give the guest a longer sleep and generate additional revenue for the hotel. Both ideas were well received by the jury with Maud and her team winning the challenge. What the believe that they did differently was that Maud and her team addressed the Social traveler trend proposing a app for discovering cities through gamification, while the level of ideas generated was on a high level the jury found the ideas of our teams to be playing off the current trends in an innovative way.