Singapore Tourism Board (STB) announced the launch of their Singapore Tourism Accelerator today (16 October), kicking it off with a pioneer cohort of nine startups.
They have been chosen from a pool of more than 160 applicants, after proposing solutions that show potential to improve productivity, formulate strong strategies to engage visitors, and enhance the overall visitor experience in the tourism sector.
The selected companies will spend the next six months refining their solutions with STB and its appointed partner Found8, at STB’s premises at Tourism Court.
They will also get the chance to testbed their solutions with industry partners such as Marina Bay Sands, Resorts World Sentosa and the Gardens by the Bay.
The Accelerator was first announced when it called for applicants in June 2019.
Its first batch sees some interesting participants from Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Australia, UK, and the Netherlands.
One company that will tackle productivity is Singapore’s Infinito, which uses AI to derive optimal hotel rates by “learning” from a hotel’s previous decisions.
In doing so, it is able to determine which decisions maximised revenue, and then execute pricing decisions and promotions on that hotel’s behalf.
Another local company, Good For Food, has a solution to manage food waste in the tourism industry, with smart dustbins that use sensors and image recognition technology to track food waste from restaurants and buffet lines.
The data helps hotels manage food inventory and output better, and can potentially translate to a 30% to 40% of reduction in food waste, and cost savings of up to 8%.
Some participants also aim to enhance the visitor experience, like Australia-based Plattar, an online platform that provides simple templates for tourism businesses to build their own augmented reality (AR) experiences easily.
In December, the nine companies will go through further assessment to determine if they are ready to move on to the next phase, where they will pilot their solutions.
Those selected will receive funding support of up to $25,000 each, and showcase their pilots to industry stakeholders and potential investors at the end of the programme in March 2020.
STB plans to recruit three more cohorts for the Accelerator programme, so if you missed the chance this round, you can apply during the next call for entries opening November 2019.
Find out more about Singapore Tourism Accelerator here.