New regional platform to develop tourism companies
The Mekong Business Initiative will launch a new platform next month aimed at developing startups in the tourism sector throughout the CLMV region, which includes Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, a program organiser said on January 31. MBI, a program launched by the Asian Development Bank and funded by the Australian government, has developed the Mekong Innovative Startup Tourism platform, which will launch this month with an initial budget of $200,000, said Ros Khemara, MBI country manager for Cambodia. With tourism identified as a key growth sector for CLMV economies, the MIST platform will look to boost private-sector-led innovation.“We will start by identifying the challenges and the product opportunities in those tourism markets,” Khemara said. “After we’ve identified the challenges, we will call out to innovators to help come up with a solution to those challenges or to come up with a new product to capture the market potential.”
