Skift Take
Hopefully the startups will focus on making Paris more useful and easy for travelers and locals -- similar to what NYC does with its NYC BigApps competition -- rather than fluffy social startups that come and go in this industry.
Updated below: Officials in Paris have…launched a startup incubator program focused on “urban tourism”, named Welcome City Lab. The plan is to host 40 startups and open meeting space to organize conferences, demos and meetups. This will be the tenth official incubator in the City of Paris.
The first founding partners are Aéroport de Paris and Sodexo Prestige (Lido, Eiffel Tower restaurants). The founding partners will have access to startups in order to monitor and pilot innovations….French funding scheme Oseo helps startups with funds and loans from Euro 30,000 to Euro 100,000.
Application process starts Apr 2 and selection will be done by June.
Updated: Paris is the world’s most visited city, with 29 million visitors in 2012; with this new incubator, Paris aims to position itself as a leading player in terms of innovation in the tourism, leisure and the events. More details on this incubator in this French language release.
Calendar for the incubator:
March 21 (today): Official Announcement and launch
April 2: Launch of a call for applications from startups
April 30: Closing of the call for nominations
April: Launch of program descriptions
Early June: Announcement of selected projects
Early July: Meeting with first class
End of 2013: Opening of the site of Welcome City Lab
Video on BFM Business channel about the new incubator (in French language), embedded below:
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