IPB Students Develop Tastenesia, A Mobile Application to Foster Indonesian Tourism

Indonesia as a tourist destination has to keep developing its services to attract more tourists each year, which will give positive impact to country's foreign exchange. This importance stimulated three Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) students to offer an alternative solution that utilizes the advancement of technology.

The three students were Aldi Solihin, Respati Widrantara, and Airlangga Vishnu. All of them are students of Computer Science Department, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMIPA). Aldi with his two colleagues designed a mobile application that is called "Tastenesia".

Tastenesia is a mobile application that helps tourists to visit, directly interact, and share their cultures with locals by having a meal in the locals' residence. "Our idea was inspired by Indonesian culture which is very friendly and warm in welcoming guests. Besides, we also want to empower Indonesian families by providing them extra income with Tastenesia," Aldi explained.

Aldi added that this application has a feature specialized for tourists and locals. Tastenesia is the first application in Indonesia that facilitates social and cultural dining that aims to empower Indonesian households to get extra income by transforming their house into home restaurant with minimum operational costs.

With their unique idea, the three students, who worked in a team, won a Second Prize in Creatonomics Business Creativity Competition (CBCC) which was held on April 29th – May 1st2018.

CBCC was an event held by Management Department, Faculty of Economy and Business, Brawijaya University. The event consisted of 2 sub-events, which are seminar and competition. This program aimed to drive sustainable entrepreneurship spirit to strengthen Indonesian creative economy with the theme "Millenials Disruptive Creativity".

The competition consisted of three steps of selection. During the first step, 60 candidates were selected, then after the second step 12 finalists were selected. Finally, the winners were selected from those 12 participants. In our interview, Aldi stated his hope, "We hope that our application can be beneficial and can be further developed in the future." (Ard)