At the recent UniHack 2024 programming competition themed “Digital Tourism”, many ideas have been incubated and developed by students of the University of Da Nang into breakthrough digital technology products and solutions in the tourism sector.

Notable among them have been the project "Hidden Gems: Tourist attraction finder app" and the project "Spoter - Millions of Destinations" - the social networking application to share real-life travel experiences.

Team The Seekers from the University of Science and Technology - the University of Da Nang won the champion of the UniHack 2024 competition for its project "Hidden Gems - Tourist attraction finder app" held in the city in late July.

According to student Pham Quang Nhut, the team leader, Hidden Gems focuses on exploiting unique, little-known tourist destinations, and at the same time, ensures that the introduced locations are of good quality and suitable for each person's interests.

This is a solution to create a spread of local culture, and bring tourism experiences, contribute to enriching and diversifying tourist destinations for people and tourists.

The idea of the app came from the fact that Vietnamese and international tourists tend to search for tourist destinations on social networks but there is still no platform that meets the requirements of users. In addition, many content creators on social networking platforms have dishonest reviews, mainly advertising and following trends.

By using accumulated points, users unlock the locations of destinations, helping to filter out the needs and interests of a certain venue. This does not create a temporary wave of trends, lose the pristine beauty and real value of an impressive tourist destination, and avoid environmental pollution.

"Along with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology to analyze images and videos, Hidden Gems can suggest the most suitable destinations for users, bringing the smartest and most convenient experience," Quang Nhut shared.

Meanwhile, team Long Tail Hamster was the runner-up at the competition with the project "Spoter - Millions of Destinations". This is a social networking application where travel enthusiasts can share real experiences and objectively evaluate destinations. With the unique 3D screen travel feature, users will have a realistic view of their destinations.

Team leader Huynh Phuoc Nguyen, a student at the University of Science and Technology, said that Spoter is an application with many differences such as a social network combined with a tourist map; suggesting destinations; and posting comments to receive rewards. When users click on a post, the tourist map will move to the requested location and display reviews from others.

In addition, the platform helps people view content related to travel destinations and experiences, providing suggested itineraries for easy consideration and planning of trips.

Moreover, when posting and participating in other challenges, users will receive vouchers and tokens (reward points) through blockchain technology, creating travel trends and attracting users.

The platform also supports the "screen" travel feature to create new destinations through 3D models digitized from real locations, providing an overview and reality, easily advertising locations, promoting new travel trends in the current independent travel trend. Technologies are integrated and used reasonably to ensure smooth and safe experience features for users.

Commenting on the above two projects, Mr. Tran Dai Quy, Head of Technology Department and Organizing Committee of Unihack 2024 competition, said that the Hidden Gems project was highly appreciated for its novel idea when identifying the current popular tourism needs and tastes, especially of the younger generation. The project aims to build a diverse data source on quality but little-known tourist destinations, creating opportunities for many people to access and enrich the independent travel experience of tourists. With great potential, Hidden Gems can continue to expand its scale of use into a multinational and territorial platform as well as integrate diverse types of tourism such as cuisine, culture and sports. At the same time, it is necessary to have a clear communication and promotion strategy to attract more users.

Meanwhile, “Spoter - Millions of Destinations” is a potential project with the idea of ​​building a community through a self-guided travel application that integrates useful features with an NFT reward mechanism using blockchain technology. The Spoter project focuses on the problem of short-term travel needs of busy people to provide reasonable solutions to enhance the travel experience of this group.

In the future, the project can continue to develop further by improving the recommendation feature as well as researching and building a more practical and effective application direction for the blockchain segment that the team is developing in this platform.

Reporting by VIET AN - Translating by M.DUNG, T.TUNG