Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism Selects 27 Promising Tourism Companies for Overseas Expansion Support

The immersive immersive show 'Brush Theater' featuring tourism experiential content.

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced on the 23rd that it has selected 27 companies as participants in the ‘2021 Tourism Global Leading Companies Development Project.’

The ‘Tourism Global Leading Companies Development Project’ is a policy initiative that provides step-by-step support such as ‘development (accelerating) → financial support → growth support’ in collaboration with private startup incubation institutions to nurture innovative tourism companies capable of competing in the global tourism market. Starting last year with a budget of 1.5 billion KRW supporting 8 companies, this year the project scale has been significantly expanded to 5.1 billion KRW and 27 companies.

Among the selected companies are approximately 80% tourism platform companies based online, including ▲ AI travel platform ‘Allu’ ▲ small and medium-sized lodging branding platform ‘Jinaem’ ▲ global travel address platform ‘Gionic’ ▲ augmented reality (AR) platform for tourism cities ‘Imperfect’ ▲ video-based next-generation online travel platform ‘Tripbitos’.

The three private incubation institutions participating as partners in this project, ‘CNT Tech’, ‘Awesome Ventures’, and ‘Y&Archer’, will provide a customized development program for about six months, prioritizing new southern markets such as Singapore as key bases for the selected companies.

The selected companies will receive commercialization support funds up to 300 million KRW (minimum 100 million KRW) and participate in tailored development programs conducted by private incubation institutions, including overseas expansion-related education, consulting, market validation, and connections with overseas investors and buyers. After completing the specialized programs by each incubation institution, opportunities will also be provided in the second half of the year to directly showcase their products and services to local investors and buyers through overseas investor presentations (roadshows) and demonstration days (demo days).

A Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism official stated, “We will support stable and systematic growth so that innovative tourism companies can thrive in the global tourism market after COVID-19,” and added, “We will diversify the policy foundation for overseas expansion by establishing support systems for each development stage, expanding overseas base networks, and broadening open innovation strategies with other international companies.”