The National Tourism Award has not only been a competition, but also a platform for identifying, measuring and directing the innovation ecosystem in Iranian tourism, a ecosystem that today requires more than ever cohesion, standardization and targeted support. According to the public relations of the National Park of soft sciences and technologies and cultural industries, Dr. Hassan Rahai, Secretary of the first edition of the National Tourism Award of Iran, described the achievements of the event with a technology and innovation approach, calling it a strategic step towards linking Soft Technologies, cultural industries and the country’s tourism industry, and said: “the National Tourism Award has not only been a competition, but also a platform for identifying, measuring and directing the innovation ecosystem in Iranian tourism, an ecosystem that today more than ever needs cohesion, standardization and support it’s purposeful. He added that the call for the award was published with the aim of identifying real, technological and influential innovations in the field of Tourism and was met with a wide reception from activists across the country; more than 120 collections from different spectrums including startups, technology companies, cultural\u2013tourism collections, service platforms, experience designers and creative field activists registered for the event. This diversity shows that the discourse of “innovative tourism” is gradually infiltrating the country’s economic and cultural activists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The secretary of the award further described the process of designing and implementing the judging as one of the strengths of the event and said that the evaluation structure of the event was set in such a way that only technological claims or innovation slogans were not accepted, but metrics such as the level of technology maturity, implementation, real impact on the tourism value chain, cultural\u2013economic value added and the scalability of businesses were accurately measured. The implementation of the preliminary stage with the aim of initial screening and reducing the burden of specialized arbitration also allowed the arbitration committee to focus on qualified sets and prevented the evaluation process from becoming a quality competition. In another section, he referred to the final arbitration results and added: “of the initial registrants, after specialized screening, 48 sets made it to the final arbitration stage and were carefully evaluated based on the approved scoring model”. According to Rahai, the results of the arbitration provide a realistic picture of the state of innovation in tourism in the country, a picture in which, along with prominent and influential examples, the gaps and misunderstandings of the concept of technological tourism are also seen clearly. He called one of the most important achievements of the award a clear distinction between “Idea” and “effective implementation”, stating that many applicants remained at the level of the plan or concept, while high-scoring collections generally had an active product or service, a coherent executive team, operational evidence and a direct link to the real needs of the tourism industry. He believes that this differentiation can help raise ecosystem standards and guide supportive resources towards real innovations. This award, beyond a competitive event, can be used as a policy tool. Data and analysis from the arbitration process can be the basis for future decisions in the field of supporting tourism technology companies, developing digital infrastructure in destinations, strengthening cultural industries related to tourism and designing empowerment programs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"