Mekong Innovative Startup Tourism (MIST) in progress. Photo: Supplied
Mekong Innovative Startup Tourism (MIST) intend to incubate new tourism industry companies, match them with investors and expand Myanmar’s travel sector in 2018, according to press release issued on Saturday.
MIST began in December 2016 as a joint venture between the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office and Government of Australia and Asian Development Bank (ADB) supported Mekong Business Initiative (MBI). It includes a Startup Accelerator for early-stage startups from Cambodia, Laos PDR, Myanmar and Viet Nam. MIST received more than 250 applications in 2017.
GoP, a travel tech startup from Myanmar, won the first prize of US $10,000 at Mekong Business Initiative Tourism Innovation Grants Award.
On 9 June, MIST tourism accelerator announced three other winners of the Mekong Business Initiative Innovation Grants Award for 2017, including Artisan Origins of Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre (TAEC), a social enterprise from Laos, Cambodia’s Camboticket and Viet Nam’s Chameleon City. The travel tech startups each received $7,000 grants.
“We are so happy to receive award of 2017 Mekong Business Innovation Grant and proud to win the prize representing from Myanmar. During the MIST Tourism Accelerator program, Topics shared by mature startups, investors and big travel tech companies were also very interesting. We plan to use the grant that we received to scale our technology and marketing,” said U Nyunt Win Aung, CEO of GoP which won first prize. —GNLM