What is the APEC App Challenge?

Travel opens up opportunities for learning, adventure and cooperation. Among others, the tourism sector supports jobs for baggage handlers, flight crews, hotel staff, restaurant workers, and guides. Tourism was the first sector to get hit by the pandemic and it could be the last to recover. There’s much work to be done. Digital tools can help open the sector more quickly.

The 2021 APEC App Challenge will help tourists understand their options in the post-COVID period and discover travel that they can TRUST, that they believe can be undertaken SAFELY, and affords them FLEXIBILITY. Developers can help consumers rediscover local tourism options in new ways that help the sector recover while keeping travelers happy and healthy. App Challenge participants will build new mobile and web tools that address these issues, using a range of different digital technologies.

Awards & Prizes

This is an important project with the potential for real impact during a global crisis, so we encourage teams to participate from across APEC. We also acknowledge the investment of time and energy that teams will dedicate to this effort, so the 2021 APEC App Challenge will award ten prizes to teams with the best ideas and vision. Participants will demonstrate their work before a panel of expert judges who will select winners. The top five teams will receive cash prizes of:

• USD4000 for the first-place team
• USD3000 for the second-place team
• USD2000 for the third-place team
• USD1000 for the fourth-place team
• USD500 for the fifth-place team
• Other fun and interesting prizes will be announced closer to the date of the event

The first prize winners will be recognized at an APEC event in June of 2021 at APEC’s Ministers Responsible for Trade meeting, alongside senior leadership from the government of New Zealand and the APEC Secretariat. Like the rest of the APEC App Challenge, this will be a virtual event.