CALL FOR CHALLENGE

Call for Challenge

The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data-driven technologies has significantly transformed the global travel and tourism industry. From personalized recommendations to dynamic pricing and intelligent itinerary planning, data analytics plays a crucial role in enhancing user experience and operational efficiency.

In alignment with the theme of ICOICT 2026: “Empowering Humanity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”, this challenge is organized to foster innovation and research in AI and data analytics applied to real-world industry problems.

This challenge is conducted in collaboration with Travlr, a leading travel technology platform that provides real-world datasets and industry use cases. Through this collaboration, participants will gain hands-on experience working with large-scale, real-world travel data.

A. Objectives

The objectives of this challenge are:

  1. To encourage innovation in AI, Machine Learning, and Data Analytics within the travel domain
  2. To bridge academic research and real-world industry applications
  3. To provide participants with experience in handling large-scale, heterogeneous datasets
  4. To foster collaboration between academia, industry, and young researchers
  5. To identify potential solutions that can be further developed and implemented in real-world systems

B. Challenge Overview

Participants are required to develop data-driven solutions based on the datasets provided by Travlr. Solutions may include (but are not limited to):

  1. Travel recommendation systems
  2. Demand forecasting models
  3. Dynamic pricing strategies
  4. User behaviour analysis and personalization
  5. Smart itinerary planning
  6. Destination analytics and trend prediction

Participants may use any AI/ML/Data Science techniques, including deep learning, statistical modeling, or hybrid approaches.

C. Dataset Description

Participants will be provided with three datasets:

C.1. Accommodation Transactions Dataset

  1. Contains hotel booking transaction data
  2. Key attributes:
    • payment_date
    • Property ID
    • Product (Hotel Name)
    • Number of Transactions

C.2 Activity Dataset

  1. Contains tourism activity data (~117 records)
  2. Attributes include:
    • Activity category (e.g., Outdoor, Cultural, Culinary)
    • Duration
    • Price and rating
    • Location

C.3 Accommodation Metadata Dataset

  1. Large-scale dataset (>4 million records)
  2. Attributes include:
    • Ratings and popularity scores
    • Price and availability
    • Location (country, city, coordinates)
    • Provider information (Expedia, Agoda, etc.)

D. Scope and Context

This challenge reflects real-world conditions in the travel technology industry, where:

  1. Data is large-scale and multi-source
  2. Data quality varies across providers

Participants are expected to:

  1. Perform data preprocessing and exploration
  2. Develop models or analytical solutions
  3. Generate actionable insights
  4. Provide clear interpretation and justification of results
  5. Produce a scientific paper presenting findings and insights that meet the standards of a Scopus-indexed conference

E. Deliverables

Each team must submit: a scientific paper that meets the standards of a Scopus-indexed conference. The paper should include:

  1. Problem definition
  2. Methodology
  3. Experimental results, include a link to the source code repository (e.g., GitHub)
  4. Discussion and insights
  5. Conclusion and potential future work

F. Evaluation Criteria

Submissions will be evaluated based on: Innovation and Originality; Technical Quality; Impact and Relevance; Interpretability and Insights; and Presentation and Communication

G. Timeline

ActivityDateMedia
Registration OpenApril 5rd 2026Official website: http://icoict.org/challenge2026
Registration Close and Dataset ReleaseApril 13th 2026Official website: http://icoict.org/challenge2026
Development PeriodApril 17th – May 14th 2026
Submission DeadlineMay 14th 2026 (23.59 AoE)Official website: http://icoict.org/challenge2026

EDAS: https://edas.info/showConferenceDetails.php?c=34657 for paper submission
Acceptance Notification for FinalistMay 23th 2026Official website: http://icoict.org/challenge2026
Final PresentationJuly 31th 2026 (ICOICT, Bali)


H. Eligibility and Registration

  1. Open to students, researchers, and professionals
  2. Individual or team participation (max. 4 members per team)
  3. Participants must register officially through https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/yefhBkgbSy
  4. Selected finalists will be announced via the official website and email notification.  Selected finalists will be those whose papers are accepted through the EDAS system. Finalists will be officially announced via email notification and the official website.
  5. Finalists are required to present their work during the Final Presentation on 30/31 July 2026 at ICOICT 2026.

I. Registration Fee and Payment Policy

Participation in the ICOICT 2026 Travlr Data Challenge is free of charge. All participants can register and take part in the challenge without any initial registration fee.

However, participants whose papers are accepted through the EDAS system will be required to complete the conference registration and payment in accordance with the official fee structure of ICOICT 2026.

J. Prize

Prize for 1st place: IDR 5,000,000.

All winners will receive:

  1. Official certificates
  2. Recognition during ICOICT 2026

K. Rules and Regulations

  1. Participants must use only the provided datasets (external data allowed with proper citation)
  2. Plagiarism is strictly prohibited
  3. All submissions must be original work
  4. The organizers reserve the right to disqualify any participant violating the rules
  5. Intellectual property remains with participants, but Travlr and ICOICT may request collaboration for further development.