My Methodology… Nurturing tourism startups to spice up journey restoration

Beta start, a pre-acceleration program developed by the innovation consultancy Beta-i and Portugal tourismis designed to support early stage startups with digital solutions that can promote tourism recovery.

The idea is to help them improve the structure of their business or promote an idea that then becomes a business.

The first cohort included startups that developed touchless solutions, sustainable initiatives and the connection of tourism with the trend towards remote working.

What is beta launch?

The Beta-Start Tourism Edition is a three-month pre-acceleration program designed to help entrepreneurs better structure their business and was developed by the collaborative innovation consultancy. Beta-iin addition to the support of Turismo de Portugal.

What are your goals?

The project comes at a time when the tourism industry needs new business models, services and digitization more than ever. To intensify the development of future pilots and solutions adapted to the new reality, Beta Start was born.

The program gathers startups in the pre-seed or seed phase with digital solutions that can support the recovery of this industry and solve some of the greatest challenges of today, circular and environmentally friendly services, integration of tourism into the new remote working mode and promotion of rural areas Areas and local products.

Why did you come up with the idea?

At a crucial moment like this, Beta-i and Turismo de Portugal wanted to develop solutions to help one of the industries hardest hit by the pandemic, while also supporting the startup ecosystem by expanding them into direct solutions impacting the market .

With this in mind, we launched The Shift to Start – Tourism Edition, an initiative that consists of two successive acceleration programs that take place at different times and for different target groups, taking into account the maturity of the idea or the startup: Beta-Shift and beta start.

Beta-Shift is an intensive three day training program designed to train individuals and aspiring entrepreneurs in the various concepts of business development. Beta Start is a three month pre-acceleration program designed to support startups in the pre-seed or seed phase of improving and growing their business.

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The goal of combining these two programs is to create a ripple effect in the industry by encouraging new ideas that can then become new startups, while supporting projects that are already in an acceleration phase.

What have been the results of beta launch so far?

After carefully selecting 17 finalist startups, they participated in three intense 90 day boot camps, 24 workshops and dozen of training sessions with 25 mentors to learn how to validate their potential solutions in the market and design a customer-centric business model, structure a coherent go-to-market strategy, test and structure your revenue and cost models, and finally create presentations for clients and investors.

Five finalists were then selected to present their business to a group of potential clients and investors made up of NEST – Tourism Innovation Center, Turismo de Portugal and LC Ventures, Portugal Ventures and Core Angels.

Among them were the Portuguese Borasurf, a platform that enables surfers and travelers to discover the local surfing community and expand their network Family work, a program designed to help parents travel with their children while they work remotely and provide the logistics of childcare.

Finalists also included Germany’s Itinerary, designed to help travelers make decisions with a simple flick of a cell phone, Israel steps, which offers a new form of communication between travelers and guides / bloggers through digital services, and the winner of the program, Spain DisVoizewho developed an application that allows tourists to follow audio guides through their cell phones and headsets, reducing the risk of contagion from shared devices during times of pandemic.

What are the next steps?

The five selected startups will now start operations or expand their operations in the market to support the recovery of the tourism industry and address its current challenges.

Some of the startups were also put in contact with partners such as Tourism Portugal to design potential pilots for implementation in Portugal.

What has been learned from the beta launch experience?

It is very difficult to identify innovations in such a pulverized market as tourism and even more difficult to implement. Even so, entrepreneurs in the tourism sector are showing strong resilience (possibly due to the natural seasonality of the sector) and all actors, both startups and partners, are showing great hope for a quick recovery once the pandemic is over. And that hope drives them to build and test new things so that when the time comes, they will be ready.