Faculty of Economics team consist of five students won gold medal in the 2023 International Youth Business Competition (IYBC), which was held online on 3 – 5 April 2023 by the Indonesian Youth Scientist Association. (IYSA). IYSA has been organizing an international-level invention competition for Business and Economics named IYBC since 2021. As a result, IYBC has transformed into the ideal learning environment for developing students’ deep-learning skills such as teamwork, critical thinking, innovation, and problem solving. This tournament attracts contestants from all over the world. In total, there are 64 teams from countries including Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia who joined this online competition.
The six competition categories for IYBC 2023 are Management and Marketing, International Business, Bank and Financial Management, Business Informatics, Economic Research, and Entrepreneurship. In this competition, team from Faculty of Economics Universitas Negeri Semarang earned gold medal in the Business Informatics category. Therefore, team from Universitas Negeri Semarang consisted of Margareth Novita Putri Larasati from Accounting Education (2021) as the team leader, followed by Hanina Humaira from Management (2021), Achmad Nauval Waliuddin from Management (2020), Nailis Sa’adah from Accounting (2020), and Michayla Ng from Management (2021). This team developed an invention in the application of artificial intelligence in the tourism sector with the title “Traversely: The Utilization of Tourism Website-Based Augmented Reality as Development Media for Post-Covid-19 Tourism Stability in Central Java” under the supervision of Mr. Sandy Arief, S.Pd., M.Sc., Ph.D. This technology has the potential to aid in the successful deployment of tourism 4.0.
Based on post-covid tourism industry challenges, these five students created an innovation that includes the collaboration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with an integrated website, which is expected to be a solution for enhancing the tourism sector during and after the Covid-19 period. Especially for MSMEs in Central Java Province. The implementation steps of traversely started from initial preparation and application creation, the introduction and search for tourism partners, website launch, the collection of complaints and feedback, the advanced planning and sustainable development, and the last process is joint evaluation. On Monday, April 3, 2023, these five students had an English presentation session after completing the processes for drafting a paper. Finally, after an extensive process, five students achieved outstanding outcomes by winning the gold medal.