Challenge

The City of Hasselt wishes to develop a digital platform to organize markets in a more attractive way, with a fourfold objective: transparency of market opportunities towards entrepreneurs (itinerant traders), transparency of market supply towards citizens (consumers), attractive and dynamic positioning of markets by the local government, administrative simplification of the organization and more adequate monitoring of market events as a basis for (re)management.

Itinerant trade in the form of sales through public markets has so far, despite the pressure of the Corona crisis, hardly been digitized and automated. With an interactive matchmaking platform for markets, the city of Hasselt wants to breathe new life into the digitalization and experience of its markets. At the moment, itinerant trade in Hasselt (as in other Flemish cities and municipalities) is not digitally accessible: there is no digital overview of available stalls at markets, so it is not possible for new or occasional market vendors to reserve a stall, market visitors cannot ask online which market vendor or products are available at a market. The current way of working lacks transparency, inhibits innovation and is administratively cumbersome for all parties involved.

The digital platform is part of the deliberate choice of the City of Hasselt to provide more digital access to the above-mentioned information to their various target groups, in order to limit the administrative burden, as well as to reach new target groups and to better align the match between supply and demand. Initially, the realization of a POC or MVP for the city of Hasselt itself is envisioned. But Hasselt especially wants to focus on the development and scaling up of a platform at the Flemish level because only then will it be possible to realize the intended social added value of a reactivation of the market event. VVSG and other cities have expressed their interest in such a market platform.