On Sunday, October 6, 10, the final judging session of the Ise "Beginning" Support Project ISE PITCH CONTEST was held in Ise City, Mie Prefecture, and Tatsuki Nakamori, a third-year student in the Department of Information and Mechanical Systems Engineering at Toba National College of Maritime Technology, presented as one of the finalists.
　The Ise "Beginning" Support Project, the ISE PITCH CONTEST, is a competition hosted by Ise City to find business ideas that will lead to "creating vitality" and "solving local issues" in Ise, and ideas are open to business plans and initiatives in all fields, including lifestyle, medicine, biotechnology, IT, culture, and tourism. Excellent ideas can be brought to fruition with advice and support from mentors and experts who know Ise-Shima well.
　More than 50 teams applied to this contest, and six teams were selected for the final presentation judging session. From our school, team ezaki-lab, consisting of four students from the Department of Information and Mechanical Systems Engineering, Kazuto Kitanaka, Raya Suzuki, and Mao Nagase, and third-year student Tatsuki Nakamori, applied and was selected as the only student finalist.
　ezaki-lab announced a plan to improve tourist satisfaction with an express pass in Oharaimachi. It was developed with the aim of creating a service that would further revitalize the tourist destination of Ise-Shima, and utilized the technology they had learned at school and their experience in developing tourism support systems.
　In recent years, the rapid development of SNS and other technologies has led to a phenomenon in which tourists tend to concentrate in certain locations at tourist destinations. This has led to problems such as longer waiting times for tourists and the inability to fully enjoy tourist destinations. On the other hand, stores and facilities that accept tourists are struggling to deal with the number of tourists that far exceeds their capacity, and tourist destinations as a whole are trying to address this issue by introducing reservation systems and dispersing tourists. Therefore, ezaki-lab proposed a system called Express Pass, which includes restaurant reservations, experience facility activities, and special gifts. By purchasing an Express Pass in advance, tourists can not only enter restaurants and facilities without waiting, but also visit unknown tourist destinations' top recommended places and receive Express Pass exclusive benefits, making sightseeing even more special. In addition, it is thought that the accepting stores and facilities can disperse tourists in terms of both time and location, and can provide more polite and courteous service than ever before.
　In response to Nakamori's presentation on behalf of team ezaki-lab, the judges asked questions and made comments such as, "Increasing repeat visitors is an issue for tourist destinations, but how do you go about doing this?", "One concern is that it will increase operations on the part of the stores. Unless the communications environment in tourist destinations is also improved, it may be difficult to operate. I hope that you will think more about the perspective of the stores and business owners to increase the possibility of this being realized," and "It would be interesting if the dispersion of tourists were to spread throughout the entire city of Ise." Unfortunately, Nakamori did not win the Excellence Award this time, but the judges commented, "It was a very passionate presentation. There were very few applications from students, so I am pleased that they applied, and I commend them for making it to the final selection."
　After the presentation, Nakamori said, "It will not be easy to proceed with the development, but we would like to aim to make it a reality by asking for cooperation from the business operators and repeating the PDCA cycle (a business improvement method of plan-do-check-act).The feedback today was very good and valuable advice, so I am glad that I entered this contest."

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Information | Students from our school will be taking the stage! Viewing the final presentation judging session on Sunday, October 10th (ISE PITCH CONTEST, Ise "Beginning" Support Project)
Ise "Beginning" Support Project ISE PITCH CONTEST Applications now open!