As our annual Mekong Tourism Forum was successfully hosted in Dali, Yunnan, we are now working on our 2019 MIST Event, to celebrate innovation with our annual travel startup competition. MIST is our Mekong Innovative Startups in Tourism program, that is now in its 3rd year, and was established by the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office and the Mekong Business Initiative with funding by the Australian government. Now a priority initiative of the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office, with support from the Asian Development Bank, MIST received over 400 applications over the first two years.
Now in its third year, this time in Bangkok, the MIST 2019 Forum is planned for the second week in October. 10 startups - two startups each from Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam - will pitch their ventures to a jury of investors and industry experts.
Recognizing that travel startups are not just about technology, in 2020, we plan to launch a dedicated track for social travel enterprises. The dedicated social ventures track within the MIST program will be the first travel social enterprise startup program in Asia, and is in talks to partner with the Booking Booster program by Booking.com. At this year's MIST 2019 Pitch Competition, we already start evaluating travel tech startups and travel social enterprise startups separately.
We are working with the tourism ministries of the Mekong countries, accelerator programs, and co-working spaces to locate interesting and relevant startups. We also encourage anybody to nominate innovative startups, as well as encourage relevant startups to contact us to be part of MIST 2019.
We invite anybody to join us for the 2019 MIST Pitch competition and the half-day Travel Startup Asia Forum on October 9th in Bangkok, hosted in partnership with ADB Ventures and PATA. Please visit MIST.asia for more information.
Kind regards,
Jens Thraenhart
Executive Director
Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office (MTCO)
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