V Spark Hackathon at Les Roches to Boost Entrepreneurship and Impact Solutions in Hospitality and Tourism

• Guided by experts, Les Roches students have developed 8 scalable initiatives with the potential to become real business projects, leveraging the business opportunities offered by hospitality and tourism in connection with technology.
• Les Roches fosters an innovative mindset through its educational offerings. 24% of its students start their own business within two years of graduating, and 33% of Alumni have successfully started their own businesses.

Madrid/Marbella -- Les Roches hosted the 5th edition of the Spark Innovation Hackathon in which 30 undergraduate (BBA in Global Hospitality Management) and postgraduate students from the Marbella campus participated. Les Roches, ranked among the world's top four hospitality management schools worldwide, organized the training in collaboration with Spark partner, WE TANGIBLE, a company specializing in Innovation, Product Development, Entrepreneurship, and the Startup ecosystem.

The objective of this hackathon, which Les Roches has been promoting for years, is to provide students and companies with the necessary tools to awaken creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit among students, one of the institution's most outstanding characteristics. Les Roches offers various specific training programs, including the BBA in Global Hospitality Management, with a specialization in Hospitality Entrepreneurship, and the new Postgraduate Diploma in Food and Beverage Management and Entrepreneurship, designed for professionals looking to develop their own business, manage the F&B services of a hotel, or join the restaurant sector.

During the Hackathon, guided by a team of entrepreneurship and innovation experts, and working in teams, students identified impact solutions based on innovation, leveraging the business opportunities offered by hospitality and tourism in connection with technology.

To do this, Les Roches students had the mentoring and evaluation of experts from leading companies and innovative startups in the Spanish ecosystem, such as George Macavei, Venture Capital & Startups BDM at Google; Anna Fortea, European Commission Business Coach; Pablo Valencia, Head of Business Development at WE TANGIBLE; and Alberto Cárdenas, CEO of Healthgroup and Fisia.

The dynamic was supported by the Les Roches entrepreneurship team and the participation of Susana Garrido, Director of Innovation and Digital Learning at Les Roches. Salva Ferri Guallar, innovation expert, corporate strategy, and Startups, co-founder and Managing Partner at WE TANGIBLE, was in charge of organizing the training.

In this 5th edition, the project considered to have the most potential was Safe Travel, a specialized software platform in the health sector, aiming to connect all tourists and digital nomads with the nearest centers and hospitals in real time, thus facilitating the patient's choice of hospital and the services included in their insurance policy.

Other projects considered to have great potential were Smile INN, which aims to eliminate guest friction points when checking in and out of the hotel through biometric solutions, generating new revenue streams for it; and Safety Cup, whose user-centered value proposition is to create a safe space in nightclubs, using reactive devices for any possible adulteration in drinks.