The first web3 travel hackathon in Munich brought over 40 travel tech enthusiasts and professionals under one roof of FTI HQ. Participants could learn, build, and deploy new concepts on Camino Network.
During one weekend, I saw more innovation with the new technology than I saw last year.
(c) Michael Buller, Chairman of the Verband Internet Reisevertrieb e.V. (VIR)
The hackathon brought together an exciting blend of approximately 40 professionals, from travel tech developers and web3 enthusiasts to business experts from 20 companies. Together, they tackled real-life pain points that travel companies face daily: numerous manual processes, personal data handling, loyalty programs, and sustainability.
With Camino Network at its core, an open-source blockchain infrastructure designed for the next generation of travel tech products, Dev Weekend served as a powerful platform for collaborative innovation. All the participants were equipped with everything they needed to innovate: comprehensive documentation, API details, insights into Camino Messenger's capabilities, and access to tools like PolygonID SDK. This resource pool enabled and inspired the developers to create solutions that could redefine travel with the rapid prototyping of ideas that can lead to groundbreaking advancements in the industry.
For many attendees, this hackathon was their very first chance to participate in such a collaborative and tech-focused event. Recognizing the diversity in experience and familiarity with blockchain technology, Bytepitch, a proactive Camino Network member, took the initiative to ensure everyone was well-prepared. Before the event even started, Bytepitch provided an essential onboarding session covering the basics of Camino Network: smart contracts, wallets, and deployment on the blockchain. This preparation phase set a solid foundation for a smooth process during the event. Participants had enough time to familiarize themselves with the technologies and capabilities.
During the hackathon, ongoing support was also provided. A dedicated Discord channel, along with on-site guidance from experts at ISO, PolygonID, and the Chain4Travel team, ensured that questions were promptly addressed and any technical challenges were overcome. Thus, teams could actively contribute, learn, and co-create regardless of their prior experience with web3 technologies.
The hackathon was organized around the topics of travel technologies, blockchain, and SSI. Here is the complete list of the challenges the teams worked on during the weekend.
Description: Vouchers based on NFT tokens can be not only money-backed vouchers but also some events, services, or, for example, a dinner at a restaurant in your travel destination. Create a seamless booking experience for customers, sellers, and service providers leveraging NFT vouchers to simplify access activities on a trip and secure personal data, money flow, and verifications.
Description: In theory, every destination, city, or place (point of interest) in the world will have a specific QR code (or something similar), so when you are in that place and scanning it, you will get a badge in NFT format (like the magnets on your fridge ), it can be free or payable with CAM coins. Extending this idea to an entire loyalty/bonus scheme.
Description: Free vacancies for round trips are to be mapped as NFTs on the blockchain. These can be booked here. The tour operator can also burn its NFTs that are not booked.
Description: Ideate and build an end-to-end loyalty and customer retention system that reaps the benefits of the blockchain and helps actors in the tourism domain.
Description: Verify the travelers' identity, proving their affiliation to a booking (flight, car rental, hotel booking) and proving their age, nationality, or ID to verify access to a flight or hotel booking. In the case of verifying a car rental reservation, it will be necessary to confirm the validity of the driver's license and age.
Description: To address sustainability by tokenizing aspects like pollution emissions, water preservation, etc, to be able to trade them and create similar incentives to carbon credits.
Description: Booking of IATA-compliant flight tickets in the luxury segment or entire travel packages (as an organizer) to be personalized to the tastes of the individual traveler party.
The panel of judges at the hackathon was a great mix of web3, travel tech, and travel business professionals. This was done intentionally to ensure a comprehensive evaluation of the presentation, both on how well the solution solved a real business problem in the travel industry and how effectively they implemented blockchain technology. This approach allowed the judges to assess both the innovative use of blockchain and the practical impact on specific challenges in travel.
As quoted at the beginning of this article, the teams managed to create a lot of innovative solutions and present them to judges. All done within the weekend. The jury collectively selected the top 3 teams:
The Web3 travel hackathon marked a significant milestone in the digital innovation journey within the travel tech community. Gathering developers from various travel tech companies, all coming together to push the boundaries of what is possible with new digital technologies — is another big step for the industry. Finally, devs could switch from the routine maintenance of existing systems to searching for сreative and innovative solutions.
Moreover, the hackathon helped expand the web3 travel community, bringing in new, active members eager to contribute to adopting Camino Network with a hands-on approach. This brings new, fresh ideas and perspectives.
Most importantly, the event served as an eye-opener for many. Web3 represents a new way of building technologies and businesses that are inherently collaborative, transparent, and community-driven. By demonstrating the practical applications of web3 in solving real-world travel industry challenges, the hackathon helped demystify the technology and showcased its potential.
Camino is the travel industry blockchain. Fueled by the Camino token, it is offering a versatile network to expand current business models and to create new touristic products to delight travelers and business partners.