Startups for the future

International youth startup competition in the tourism and hospitality industry, PROTOURISM-2023, was held at Ural State University of Economics as part of the XIII EEYF. Out of 151 submitted papers, 22 made it to the final, and all of them are worthy of being implemented in Russia.

If at least once in your life you have found that the program of travel agencies does not suit you, then the project of the team from Saransk will close the issue. You will no longer have to pay for locations you do not want to visit, and get up early in the morning to catch a plane if you want to sleep, contestant Ilmira Bikkulova says.

“An online travel agency differs from others because it has a tour aggregator. For understanding, I will liken to cars - they also have similar systems, thanks to which a potential buyer chooses a color, engine power, adds a child seat and other accessories. At the same time, a person sees the price and plans a budget. We suggest doing the same in an online agency. A person can plan a route, add places of interest from those presented on the site, or contact the call center staff and offer his own options. The traveler will see how the cost of the tour changes depending on his requests. It’s comfortable,” Ilmira Bikkulova says about the project.

The theme of traveling is gaining momentum every year: we plan our vacations, long weekends, evening walks. And even those who are not interested in tourism, according to the author of the project, will still be happy to have a choice of comfortable travel.

“Frankly speaking, I am majoring in marketing. I have nothing to do with tourism. However, we all would like to have interesting and inexpensive vacations, isn’t that true? My project is connected specifically with Russia, which is a hot topic now. I’m talking about routes in my homeland,” the contestant continues.

Darya Kamaeva and her team support Ilmira’s patriotic thoughts and offer to create an ethnographic village “Sam Saami”. The goal is intriguing - to immerse tourists in the world of Saami.

“Live open-air ethnographic museums, similar to a folklore village, which contain samples of traditional architecture and household utensils, are of great interest,” says Darya Kamaeva, a representative of the startup. “Today, there are no complexes associated with real Saami in the territory of the Murmansk region. The tour will specialize in an almost undeveloped, but popular type of tourism among the population—an ethnographic one.”

The girl talked not only about the project and its significance but also began to immerse listeners, participants, and experts of the competition into the world of the small Finno-Ugric people.

“Traditional Saami food is bear meat and venison, which is cut into thin slices and dried. They fried, dried, and boiled meat, added flour and berries,” Darya Kamaeva shared her knowledge. “In summer, the basis of the diet was fish, usually lake fish. These are pike, monkfish, perch. Plant foods mattered less.”

These are just two projects presented at the International Youth Competition for Startups PROTOURISM-2023.

“At the first stage, there were 151 papers. Of these, 81 - in the nomination “Tourism”, 52 works in the nomination “Hospitality” and 18 works - in “Food Industry”. 34 works made it to the second round,” Roza Timakova, a lecturer at the USUE Department of Tourism Business and Hospitality, commented.  “According to the Regulation, only 16 projects were to be considered in the final, but we decided to admit 22 projects, because they are very promising. The guys will be able to show their skills and prove that they deserve to win.”

It should be noted that participants of this competition were not only from Russia but also guests from Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.