Homie

💎 Idea

Modern travel inspiration starts on social media but viral posts send everyone to the same overcrowded places. Our platform redirects that inspiration: instead of sending travellers to the exact spot in the video, we reroute them to nearby, authentic alternatives and enrich their trip with local experiences that benefit the community, not just the tourist economy.

Homie starts as a browser extension that turns TikToks, Youtube and Reels into instant, bookable itineraries featuring hidden-gem locations, local businesses, and smarter timing. As we grow, the product expands into a full booking and marketplace platform for stays, activities, and artisan souvenirs, creating a scalable, traveller-to-local economy.

Same inspiration. Better impact. Less crowd. More culture.

🛰️ EU Space Technologies

Phase 1 (Current): Homie already harnesses Copernicus and EGNOS to make exploration smarter and more meaningful.

• Copernicus Land Monitoring Service data (elevation, water, and land cover) is used to detect scenic and authentic local alternatives to overcrowded destinations.

• Elevation insights help rank and recommend visually rich stopovers along user-selected routes.

• GNSS/EGNOS ensures high-precision positioning, enabling accurate map guidance and seamless navigation.

Phase 2 (Next Steps): We’ll expand the system’s intelligence through richer Copernicus datasets:

• Sentinel-2 imagery for land-use refinement and visual similarity detection, helping match destinations by scenery and texture.

• Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) data for weather- and season-aware route planning.

• Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) integration to dynamically adapt recommendations to natural events or hazards.

• Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) for air-quality-aware travel suggestions, promoting healthier, sustainable journeys.

EU Space for Consumer Experience

We are responding to Challenge #3 – “Beyond Horizons: Redefining Travel with Space Innovation.”

How our solution fits:

Homie focuses on reshaping how people discover and move through destinations. By using geo-based data to guide travellers toward lesser-visited areas, we support a smarter and more balanced way of exploring places, one that spreads foot traffic, unlocks overlooked spots, and enables real local engagement.

Instead of simply optimising travel for speed or efficiency, the goal is to optimise for experience quality: comfort, authenticity, cultural depth, and reduced overcrowding. This is where space-enabled mapping, location insights, and real-time movement data become valuable for meaningfully redesigning how travellers interact with places.

How Homie contributes to enhancing consumer experiences:

• Personalised travel experiences: Instead of generic itineraries, travellers receive tailored, context-aware routes that reflect what inspired them (via social media video) and lead them to authentic local experiences.

• Reduced crowding and improved comfort: By rerouting away from saturated tourist hotspots, users can enjoy less congested, more relaxing and genuine environments, which improves the overall experience.

• Deeper local immersion: The platform connects travellers with local makers, artisans and businesses (via souvenirs, bookings, marketplace), so users don’t just see a place, they engage with it in a meaningful way.

• Seamless digital-physical journey: From social media inspiration → browser extension itinerary → bookings → arrival at alternative spots and meaningful souvenirs, the consumer journey is clean, integrated, and reduces planning friction.

• Sustainable and meaningful tourism: For the consumer, knowing their travel supports local communities, fosters authenticity and avoids “tourist trap fatigue” adds emotional value, enhancing the quality of the consumer experience.

🤼 Team

• Mai Phan: AI & Data Developer - Focuses on building intelligent, data-driven systems. Leveraged experience from internship in Telespazio to bring Earth-observation insights into the POI similarity engine, enabling the platform to rank scenic alternatives using real-world environmental data.
• Linh Lai: Product Owner and Business Strategist - Leads the project’s planning, prioritization, and feature definition by translating the vision of a sustainable alternative travel model into a clear product strategy roadmap around promoting scenic local alternatives to counteract overtourism. 
• Kiet Dinh: Front end designer - Contributes to the crafting of user interfaces and processing input content from social media, ensuring that the hotspots and potential points of interest inform the design process and align with homie´s goal.  
• Khai Minh Mai: Full stack developer - Designs and implements the overall platform architecture as a browser extension, ensuring scalability, performance, and seamless integration between AI models, spatial data sources, and front-end components.