The X-Nordic Travel Contest (XNTC) is an initiative by Nordic Innovation, designed to strengthen and enhance the future sustainability and competitiveness of Nordic tourism. Just read on, and you can read the complete Nordic Guidebook for Tourism Innovation online.
Tourism innovation doesn’t conclude with a hackathon, a testbed, or even the launch of a promising new product. It’s an ongoing process of iteration, adaptation, and discovery. It’s a journey, not a destination. This Guidebook offers a snapshot of that journey, filled with learnings, strategies, and stories from the X-Nordic Travel Contest program. But, as with innovation, there is no significant conclusion to this final chapter, much like there is no big final revelation of the XNTC program.
****************************************
Related: Nordic Innovation: Exploring Scandinavia’s Rise Into Smart Cities
****************************************
In the foreword, Svein Berg, Managing Director of Nordic Innovation, states, “he has been delighted to see more than 300 tourism businesses and organizations of all sizes, from all parts of the Nordic region, take part in the X-Nordic Travel Contest. Over the past two years, in workshops, hackathons, testing tracks, and beyond, they have described their challenges, pinpointed the solutions they would like to see, and helped develop and test new travel tech innovations and business models”.
“The tourism industry is quite old-school. Many organizations barely use AI, even though there’s so much potential to optimize their operations. There’s resistance to change, partly because the average age in these organizations is high, and change management can be challenging,” says Mathias Mølgaard, CEO & Co-founder, Storyhunt, in an interview.
*************************************
You might also like to read The top 3 secrets to Scandinavian innovation in education.
*************************************
XNTC MAPPING APPROACH
The mapping in this guidebook is not a scientific or statistically exhaustive analysis but instead a practical, data-driven overview designed to guide the XNTC’s search for solutions within the program’s prioritized problem fields and hopefully also as a resource to a broader circle of tourism industry stakeholders and policymakers seeking to understand the landscape and identify opportunities across the Nordic tourism ecosystem.
“The tourism industry proved to be a great and extreme place for testing. It’s not bogged down by heavy compliance, which gave us room to try out new approaches. However, it is also incredibly challenging as it deals primarily with immediate business concerns. Hence, finding ways to make cybersecurity feel accessible and worth their time was critical,” said Eskil Sørensen, CEO & Founder, Cybercue, in an interview.
As the tourism industry and everything around it evolve, driven, among other things, by sustainability demands, workforce challenges, new technologies, digital transformation, and inclusivity, the future will require not just creativity but persistence. The key to staying ahead is to keep staying ahead: testing boundaries, rethinking assumptions, allowing for failed attempts, and trying again.
The XNTC experience reminds us that innovation isn’t about perfection but progress.
This summary is extracted from the Nordic Guidebook for Tourism Innovation. You can read the complete guidebook here.
Feature image (top): Lighthouse on Iceland.