One Hackathon That Ruled Them All
Exactly a year ago, with the combined experience of having attended almost 40 hackathons and organised the biggest ones in Europe and Hong Kong (including those crazy ones on the bus and a train), our team of 4, travel-obsessed friends came together to innovate innovation — redesign the hackathon model.
We saw that a hackathon — which was born as a tool for tech companies to try to solve the most pressing problems through coding get-togethers — was increasingly becoming a marketing gimmick.
It bothered us that ideas that we created were never executed, neither by the company, nor by us, as the data, access to decision-makers and APIs were usually cut off at the end of the event.
We thought there must be a way to do it better.
As geeks at heart and global citizens by choice, we decided that travel technology would become our test bed, as we were all excited by its ability to move the needle in the siloed Travel industry.
Equipped with a blank Keynote canvas, a make-shift Trello CRM board and a Gmail account, we set out to talk to the travel industry — and convince them to support our idea of the first TravelTech hackathon on a plane.
The end goal was ambitious. Bring together the biggest industry players in travel (with their APIs and insights) with 32 of the most talented entrepreneurs, designers and coders and give space to connect and use each other’s insights to create innovation for international passengers. More specifically, improve the end-to-end customer experience — and do it on the plane.
the problem we were trying to fix was the lack of real-life customer validation and testing during hackathons
It was the idea which we had to defend the strongest during many conversations with potential sponsors who tried to convince us to organise a “grounded”, more operationally viable version of our idea. We consistently resisted, keeping in mind that the problem we were trying to fix was the lack of real-life customer validation and testing during hackathons. We fought and we won this battle.
With the support of British Airways, Hong Kong Airport, Heathrow, Regal, Travelport, WeWork (and more!) Hack Horizon took place at the beginning of May 2017.
What were the reasons that made it so unique?
1. Exciting market
We chose to focus specifically on TravelTech in Asia as despite the recent success of companies like Klook or Tink Labs, it is yet to witness it’s prophesied boom.
Asia Pacific is the global driver for demand in travel, with its 300 million arrivals growing at 8% each year.
Additionally, a new and interesting group of demanding and extremely mobile passengers is flooding the market — the millennials, out of whom 88% take international trips 1–3 times a year. Amidst rampant competition between the major airline carriers, cost-cutting is not proving to be a sustainable solution and it is the customer experience that should be brought back into the centre of attention.
Hack Horizon allowed its participants to jump ahead of the game and work with real customers as they journeyed from Hong Kong to London and had a chance to talk to fellow passengers to uncover their pain points and build solutions, which place the user at the heart of the experience.
2. Full immersion
We designed the hackathon according to the design thinking methodology — empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test. Our participants were fully immersed in the customer journey and iterated their ideas in real-time, focusing on some of the biggest issues in Travel (check out our free TravelTech reports to know more).
Scheduled over 80 hours, they had a chance to observe it all — the good and the bad — starting in a hotel, taking the airport express, checking-in, flying and then doing the same in London. We also equipped them with knowledge about the user research principles, latest technology, startup planning, latest APIs and industry mentorship throughout the hack.
3. Build It — And Own It
Supported by a collection of industry leaders, Hack Horizon was rooted in the idea of rallying up all the travel ecosystem players around the central idea — the passenger — rather than focusing on just one company’s needs.
In practice, this solved one of the biggest problems that happen at hackathons, which is teams not owning the rights to their intellectual property created during the event.
To change this, we we will help to spin them off into a startups through the industry connections, knowledge and capital. Our mentors will come come from across all the verticals which make up the customer journey in travel — from bookings, to transportation, accommodation, airports and airlines — to help the teams get depth and breadth necessary for making their product feasible. More importantly, after the pitching in London where they will gather valuable feedback, the teams will get to choose to continue working on the idea thanks to the co-working space provided by our sponsors. In this way, we want to extend the innovation runway beyond the hackathon itself and help new travel startups enter the market.
4. Mix In With The Best
Last but definitely not least, the People.
Through a three-step, rigorous process we filtered through over 700 applicants from over 50 countries, down to 250 who we asked to submit 60s video pitches and then invited 100 for a face to face interview to finally select the 32 best talents in business, design and coding, who took part in Hack Horizon.
Our criteria were very simple and clear — skills and previous experience, as well as passion for travel. Our #Final32 was a crazy, creative and diverse group, and here are the ideas that they built during the Hack Horizon journey:
DESTINATION (WINNERS)
An in-flight entertainment to mobile solution where travellers can buy inflight and destination experiences.
LUX EXPRESS (RUNNERS UP)
A platform where users can buy airport luxury duty free goods at the best prices via a global traveller network.
TRIPFLOW
An end-to-end security luggage transfer platform powered by blockchain.
HAPPI
Predictive AI to manage and enhance passenger experience across all airline-hub touch points.
LOUNGE
Free Lounge Access Sharing App turning missed connections into human connections.
KIDFLY
A trusted premium service for parents to fly their kids alone safely.
KOLLABO
A chatbot for collaborative group destination discovery and trip booking.
ABO
Smartwatch that uses deep learning to personalise passenger experience for connecting flights at Heathrow.
Are you a hackathon enthusiast or organiser? Have you seen some interesting ideas in the space or would like to share your own ideas on how to ensure that innovation and customer-centric process is always at the forefront of the experience? Let’s open the discussion in comments!
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