Korea Tourism Organization Announces Recruitment for '2021 Tourism Accelerating Support Project' Participating Companies

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] The Korea Tourism Organization announced on the 27th that it is recruiting companies to participate in the ‘2021 Tourism Accelerating Support Project,’ which supports the short-term rapid growth of early-stage tourism companies less than three years old.

Accelerating is a private investment-linked professional incubation support program that encompasses early investment, networking, mentoring, market development, and education to accelerate corporate growth. For this program, the Tourism Organization selected three specialized accelerators (CNT Tech, Y&Archer, MY Social Company) through a preliminary public offering earlier this month. Together with them, a total of 30 companies, 10 per accelerator, will be selected and provided with differentiated customized support by each accelerator.

CNT Tech is a technology-leading company that started as a tech company and expanded its business area through accelerating. It can support the technological advancement of incubated companies through engineer matching and plans to focus on recruiting tourism and ICT convergence companies in particular.

Y&Archer is interested in revitalizing local tourism companies and focuses on recruiting regional companies. It operates specialized programs such as the ‘Market Validation Program’ and ‘Support for Participation in the Global Conference A-Stream’ for selected companies.

MY Social Company has strengths in impact investment that contributes to society through professional incubation and investment, supporting the growth of more than 90 innovative startup teams annually. Through a specialized program called 'LET's Accelerate!', it plans to nurture competitive startups in the tourism sector.

The 30 selected companies will be provided with program support such as accelerator-linked capacity-building education and mentoring, business commercialization funds of 50 million KRW, and opportunities to participate in specialized programs utilizing the Tourism Organization’s tourism industry network, big data, and knowledge infrastructure. In particular, if selected as an outstanding company during the program operation period, they can receive direct investment of up to 200 million KRW from the responsible accelerator.

Applications are accepted until 2 p.m. on May 21, and only small and medium-sized enterprises in the tourism sector less than three years old as of the announcement date are eligible to apply. Applicants should select the most suitable one accelerator considering the programs provided and main recruitment targets of each accelerator. Since selection criteria and required documents vary by accelerator, individual announcements should be referred to.

Andeoksu, Head of the Tourism Enterprise Support Office at the Korea Tourism Organization, said, “Considering that participating companies are tourism companies less than three years old, this project has strengthened the market validation program for business items compared to last year,” and added, “We hope this accelerating program will be an opportunity for early tourism companies to make a new leap forward amid the difficulties caused by COVID-19.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.