Cultural destination gamification platform Nexto earned the largest of half a dozen grants awarded by Booking.com B.V. at the end of a busy weekend of learning, mentoring and pitching. The startup received their full scaling needs of €25,000.
Meanwhile five other startups impressed enough to earn themselves grants as well. While Outdoor Journal & Voyage and Cloud Guide each received €20,000, TripUniq were granted €15,000. Finally, funding to the tune of €10,000 went to both XMigrations and Alternative Athens.
Pioneers further awarded a pair of Pioneers’18 tickets to two impressive innovators in the shape of STUDIOMAPP and subcultours. All participants will continue to work with their Booking.com B.V. mentors over the next six months.
“This has exceeded all our expectations of what a three-day acceleration programme could be,” declared Cristina Pérez Ferrer, CMO of smart sightseeing app Cloudguide. “It was great to see the whole Booking.com B.V. team so involved and helpful! Now it’s time to make the most of the follow-up mentorship programme.”
“The first Booster Lab in Barcelona was incredibly inspiring!” said Irene de Bot, Program Manager of Booking Booster. “We’re impressed by the hard work of all the ventures and are looking forward to continuing working with them over the upcoming months as they grow their businesses and their impact in the tourism industry.”
In the Friday to Sunday program, 11 startups chosen from 262 applications participated in hands-on workshops and engaged in direct mentorship from the best experts in tourism industry. The weekend concluded with a pitching day on Sunday, when the entrepreneurs put some of their new-found insights up for public scrutiny. Booking.com B.V. will accompany all startups throughout the next six months with their expertise and network.
“The event was intense but well worth it because we had our outdoorvoyage.com concept validated by some of the smartest people in the industry,” said Lorenzo Fornari, Co-Founder of The Outdoor Journal. “We also got to spend three days with 10 other amazing startups with whom we found some great synergies and even friendships. And we plan to take full advantage of generous mentorship program that Booking.com B.V. has granted us for the next six months.”
Want to make your mark at the next Booster Lab? Note that the next of the weekend Booster Lab events will take place in Tel Aviv on March 1st-3rd. Pioneers Discover will open the starting scouting process for early-stage startups on December 11, so stay tuned to our social media channels for a reminder when the Open Call goes live.
Another startup opportunity that’s already live and at which founders should take a look is the Booking Booster, a three-week accelerator program taking place in Amsterdam in May 2018 for later-stage startups. Featuring the opportunity for sustainable tourism scale-ups to pitch for grants of up to €500,000, it was in fact the success of last year’s inaugural Booking Booster that has led to the creation of the Booster Lab roadshow. Read more details about the requirements and apply here by January 7th!
