'Next-Generation K-Tourism Companies Gathered'... Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism & Korea Tourism Organization Alumni Day

Networking Expansion Event for Tourism Companies and Investment Firms

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Tourism Organization announced on the 18th that they held the ‘2024 Tourism Global Challenge Alumni Day (hereinafter Alumni)’ at Andaz Seoul Gangnam.

2024 Tourism Global Challenge Alumni Day Business Meetup
Photo by Korea Tourism Organization

The Tourism Global Challenge is a program launched in 2020 by the Ministry and the Organization to nurture the next-generation K-tourism companies leading the global tourism industry. So far, a total of 118 companies have been selected and supported.

This year’s Alumni, held for the second time, was attended by about 160 people, including 63 tourism startups, 7 Singaporean investment firms, overseas tourism offices and investment agencies, and 34 tourism venture funds, based on business collaboration demands between senior and junior tourism startups.

In the first part, about 180 consultations took place between tourism startups and partner companies (VCs, OTAs, PoC, related organizations, etc.) based on prior matching. In the second part, there were lectures and networking sessions on inbound product development plans by overseas regions linked with the Organization, successful cases of overseas expansion and investment attraction (H2O Hospitality).

Notably, this year, seven Singaporean VCs interested in investing in Korean tourism startups were invited to support 1:1 meetups with tourism startups, providing a venue for serious consideration of overseas investment attraction. Among them, K3 Ventures and Qualgro Partners were selected as operators for the Global Fund investment project by Korea Venture Investment in July and plan to actively support overseas investment attraction for domestic startups.

Kim Sung-jin, head of the Brand Content Team at the Korea Tourism Organization, is giving a lecture on inbound product development.
[Photo by Korea Tourism Organization]

Kim Dong-il, Head of the Tourism Industry Division at the Korea Tourism Organization, said, “We will spare no effort in follow-up support so that excellent tourism startups can connect and discover cooperative projects, and overseas investment attraction for them can be practically achieved. We will lead the overseas market investment and expansion of Korean tourism startups to produce K-Travel Unicorns (Tracon·Travel Unicorn) in the future.”

The Organization continues mid- to long-term support such as overseas investment attraction and proof of concept (PoC) for Korean tourism startups through overseas expansion programs linked with domestic accelerators and tourism business support centers in Singapore and Tokyo. In the second half of the year, it plans to further expand support for overseas expansion of tourism startups by opening new overseas tourism business support centers.