When and how did your incubator emerge?
Le Welcome City Lab was founded in July 2013. It was the first incubator in the world completely dedicated to innovation in the tourism, travel, hospitality sectors.
What opportunities do you provide for startups and what are the terms to join?
We provide 4 services:
What can you tell about local travel tech scene? How busy is it?
The Paris travel tech scene has made a tremendous leap for the past 4 years. The number of startups is booming. They now can have an easy access to venture capital and to a rich ecosystem.
Could you share few examples of prominent startups which went through your incubator or are part of it now?
Here are 3 examples of successful startups incubated in our offices:
What opportunities do you provide for startups and what are the terms to join?
We provide a stunning shared workspace overlooking the River Thames and Tower Bridge, a bespoke business and professional support programme and brokered relationships with over 400 world leading travel and tourism businesses. Our startups who chose to base their business from our Lab form our membership base. At any one time, we have about 35 members who can access our facilities and curated support programme. With an intention to promote collaboration across the membership, our policy is that no member can directly compete with another to ensure they feel confident and open to collaborate with and support each other.
However, as the Lab itself has grown we have become the recognised epicentre for those working at the intersection of travel and technology and so we set out to engage with a wider, global community of innovative businesses to facilitate further interactions and support across the community. As an example, we created the hashtag 'TalkTravelTech' across social media to cultivate a community of over 900 startups who use this tool to connect to each other and our opportunities.
What can you tell about local travel tech scene? How busy is it?
As the second most visited city in the World, London is synonymous with travel. Further, as one of the world’s leading technology hubs with an estimated ecosystem value of 44 billion dollars, London is the largest startup ecosystem in Europe. These incredible strengths in both travel and technology meant London should be the natural 'home' for travel and technology.
Specifically, our active community as a whole has seen phenomenal success since we opened the Lab in 2015 and continues to thrive.
Cumulatively, our 72 members that have been through the Lab have:
From your own perspective what areas in travel tech space do you see having most potential today?
Many of the innovations that have come through our lab mirror the trends in travel which have emerged over the last five years, such as: