InvestHK (Invest Hong Kong) was established in the year 2000 to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) and support overseas entrepreneurs to setup and expand in Hong Kong. From 23-30 January 2016, Invest HK is spearheading a week-long StartmeupHK Festival to attract global entrepreneurs to grow their business in Hong Kong. While at the festival, we’re trying to explore newer avenues that can contribute to the growth of Hong Kong’s startup ecosystem.

The right ingredients to foster the startup ecosystem

According to the Financial Secretary, Mr John C Tsang, Hong Kong’s start-up scene has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years, with more than 1,500 start-ups in the city, which is an increase of nearly 50 per cent when compared with 2014. These ventures are led by entrepreneurs, investors, corporations, universities and Government.

The Financial Secretary, Mr John C Tsang, this morning (January 26) gives the opening remarks at the StartmeupHK Venture Forum 2016 held by Invest Hong Kong

The number of startup accelerators & incubators have surged from 3 to 40 since 2010. 43% of the startup founders in Hong Kong are from overseas including Mainland China & Taiwan which is a strong indication of Hong Kong’s global appeal to startups.

Travel Startups in Hong Kong are also attracting funding

Culturally, Hong Kong has been known as a financial destination with the presence of world’s top banks in the city. In addition, Hong Kong’s closeness to Shenzhen, a manufacturing hub, makes it a gateway for companies looking to position themselves strategically across China. Sectors like IoT, FinTech have emerged strongly and a vast number of investments are being made in these verticals indicating that value created technologies are creating a strong impact.

From Left: Klook’s Co-Founder Eric Gnock Fah with Co-Panelist at StartmeupHK festival in Hong Kong

That said, Hong Kong based travel-tech startup, Klook started about 18 months ago in the mid of 2014, had recently raised its Series A funding round of USD $5M. Klook helps customer in the travel itinerary space by enabling discounted tours & sightseeing and also enables merchants to manage their platform more efficiently with its tech solution.

It is the ideal business hub in Asia

According to Eric Gnock Fah, whose company Klook has raised funds from Hong Kong & China, “Hong Kong is a great global launch platform, especially since it is the most travelled city in the world making it conducive for travel businesses”. With Klook, their idea is to demonstrate that they can own the Hong Kong market and scale it further making it a truly global brand based out of Asia.

According to Dr Simon Galpin, Director-General of InvestHK, free inflow/outflow of information & low tax regime make Hong Kong a prime location for overseas and mainland companies to setup their operations.

Statistics indicate that over the last decade, there has been approximately 25% growth in number of companies preferring Hong Kong for managing their regional operations in Asia making it a highly attractive business location.

Dr Simon Galpin at StartmeupHK Festival 2016

Newer avenues for fund-raising are opening up

The earlier notion was that tech companies should look towards California, while for operations in China you are better off being based in Beijing, Shanghai or Shenzhen. Entrepreneurs used to face a challenge in educating investors that being based in Hong Kong, you can still build a global company.

A new HK $2BN government fund has been announced recently to boost funding in technology startups via a matching process. In addition, Alibaba’s HK $1BN entrepreneurs fund presents a great opportunity for travel entrepreneurs to think of new ideas that can bring in new values to a city which accounts for the world’s most travellers. Both these funds are open to ideas from foreign entrepreneurs which means that Hong Kong is looking at attracting more overseas talent to start-up in the region.

A quick look at InvestHK’s last year’s project info indicates that Tourism & Hospitality emerged as the top sector in 2015, accounting for 57 of the 375 completed projects. So if you are a budding entrepreneur, you might want to foster innovation in the travel & tourism vertical in Hong Kong as this is perhaps the most appropriate time. Also Read: Hong Kong’s 10 coolest Travel Startups.

The post Can we expect the next big Travel Startup to emerge from Hong Kong? appeared first on TravHQ.

The travel and tourism industry plays an important role in the economy of Hong Kong. With approximately 270,000 people employed in this field, Hong Kong’s tourism industry accounts for 7.2% of the total employment. Last year 60 million tourists visited Hong Kong.

Observing the vast travel market opportunities in Hong Kong, many travel startups have come into existence in the past few years. We have listed a few of them below that might be useful for travellers visiting this destination:

#1 Carshare.hk

Founded by Christopher Yeung in 2013, Carshare.hk allows travellers to rent cars available in their neighbourhood. While placing the requests, the travellers will be charged HK$8,000 from their credit cards as security deposit. Once the owners of the cars approve the requests, the travellers will have the liberty to pick up the cars they selected and drive to different tourist destinations. After using the cars for the desired duration, the travellers will have to drop them at the same location. The rental costs and insurance premium will be deducted from the deposits. The idea will catch up well with more people travelling to the region.

Languages: Chinese/English

#2 Hong Kong Foodie Tasting Tours

Launched by Cecilia and Silvana in 2011, this website is exclusively for foodies who will be visiting Hong Kong any time soon. Hong Kong Foodie caters to travellers who wish to explore and taste different local food items. The food tour will also bring to light the history and culture. The travellers can pick any of the food tours like Central and Sheung Wan Foodie Tour, Tai Po Market Foodie Tour and Sham Shui Po Foodie Tour available in the website.

Languages: English

#3 I Like Local

Founded by Sanne Meijboom in 2013, I Like Local highlights the importance of exploring like a local. This website offers unique local activities hosted by people in developing countries. There are activities like Trek and Tour, Homestay, Farmstay, Art and Culture tours, Food experience, Volunteering and lot more. Not only will the travellers get to experience the destination like a local but will also support the small local businesses. The team of ‘I Like Local’ works on the principles of ‘Connect, Engage and Empower’.

Languages: English

#4 Klook

Launched by Eric Gnock Fah, Ethan Lin and Bernie Xiong last year, Klook is a booking website that offers tours, activities, guides, itineraries, insider tips and lists of tourist attractions. The destinations listed on the website are Tokyo, SIngapore, Hong Kong and Seoul. With seamless booking facility, using Klook is very simple for the travellers. What makes this website truly unique is that it includes ‘connoisseur recommendations’ from well-known personalities.

Languages: English, Chinese

#5 Nomad List

Nomad List is a platform that caters especially to digital nomads. Founded by Pieter Levels, this website lists the best places in the world to live and work remotely. The cities are listed with relevant information like Scores, People, Places to work, Places to sleep, Cost of living and FAQs that can assist the ‘perpetual travellers’ to pick their favourite destinations. Nomad List has many other features like Forum, Chat and Meetups to attract more travellers and help them interact with each other. Nomad List has grabbed the attention of many prominent media houses that include: Forbes, TNW, Wired, Huffington Post, Mashable and Fox News.

Languages: English

#6 Walk in Hong Kong

If you are the kind of traveller who loves to explore on foot, try ‘Walk In Hong Kong’ website. Launched in 2013 by Paul Chi-yuen, Haider Kikabhoy and Chung-wah Chow, ‘Walk In Hong Kong’ offers local walking tours for an authentic feel of the city. Except the regular tours for foreign travellers, there are ‘Special Tours’ that offer locals a different perspective of their city. The regular tours include: Hello Hong Kong, Good Evening Kowloon and Knock Knock – An authentic Home Tour. The special tours include: Law and the City, Urban Myths and Sham Shui Po – A Story of Grassroots of Hong Kong. It also has services like Corporate Training, Team Building and Consulting, Lectures and Seminars.

Languages: English

#7 Twangoo

Twangoo is a website that offers exciting new city experiences and unique travel experiences. It is gradually placing itself as a lifestyle and luxury platform for travellers who are ready to spend substantial amount of money for the best services. They hand pick top rated providers across the city and offer them to the members at attractive prices. They negotiate with the providers to offer the best deals on the platform on daily basis.

Languages: English

#8 Hotel Quickly

Founded in 2012 by Tomas Laboutka, Christian Mischle, Michal Juhas, Mario Peng and Raphael Cohen, Hotel Quickly is the best mobile-only last minute hotel booking app with the finest hotels at affordable prices. This multi-lingual app has been developed taking into account that ‘spontaneous moments enrich life’. It offers top-rated hotels from Asia-Pacific region with attractive last minute discounts. Hotel Quickly is surely a great app to save money while travelling at the eleventh hour. The app has a well designed user interface making it easy to use on the go..

Languages: English, Thai, Vietnamese, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Melayu, Simplified Chinese, Cantonese, Taiwanese and Korean.

#9 Rent-a-suitcase

This startup founded by Rachel Cehung came up with an innovative concept for business. Rent-a-suitcase, as the name suggests, offers suitcases and bags to travellers. This kind of business was deemed necessary after observing that many travellers have some suitcases that are rarely used and usually sit around for most part of the year. Such suitcases/bags can be rented out to travellers who are travelling out of town for few days.

Languages: Chinese

#10 Spottly

Founded in 2013 by Edwyn Chan, Spottly is a social travel app that features the best places to eat, shop and stay. The user of Spottly can click photos and create travel posts on it within 10 seconds. This app can be used for planning and recording unique travel adventures and experiences. This startup aims to be Asia’s most vibrant travel community. It has been featured as ‘Best New App’ on the App Store and been featured on Mashable, Skift, Los Angeles Time etc.

Languages: English

Are there any other innovative travel startups from Hong Kong that you would like to see on the list? Do share with us.

The post Travel Sprint: Our Pick Of Hong Kong’s 10 coolest travel startups appeared first on TravHQ.

There has been a significant rise in the demand of experiential travel. Today’s millennials don’t just plan to travel anywhere but wish to explore areas that can give them unique experiences. They are adventure freaks and love to involve themselves in activities like scuba-diving, skydiving, rock climbing, para-gliding etc. There are a bunch of exciting travel startups in the experience/activity planning segment that are catering exclusively to this category of off-beat and adventurous travellers with their line-up of activities:

If you are a travel junkie and love to adventure and involve yourself in activities native to different countries, we have listed a few stunning experiences you can include in your travel plans:

#1. An escape in the modern villa by a pristine lake (Spoty.com)

Founded by Pavel and Vali, Spoty has an experience that you will cherish for a longtime. Hosted by Catalina in Tesila, Romania, an exquisite villa with an admirable contemporary architecture and a comfortable environment awaits your arrival. This boutique hotel can accommodate up to 28 guests. It is surrounded by green hills, a dense forest and a clear lake which will give the travellers an opportunity to disconnect from the city life and embrace the beautiful nature. Adventure-seekers can get an adrenaline rush by activities such as kayaking, horse-riding and boating.

Amenities offered: Food, Free Parking, Sauna, Gym, WiFi, Garden, TV, Air Conditioner, Dryer, Free bikes to enjoy the nearby landscapes, Fishing etc.

Price: US$104 (1 Guest for 2 Days)

For more details, you can visit the Spoty.com webpage.

#2. Have a 3-hour off-road adventure in the Nevada Desert (Peek.com)

Wish to drive a fully equipped jeep in the deserts all by yourself and not just be a passenger? Peek, an exciting startup providing high-quality activities with best vendors across the globe, gives such an offer to its customers. The destination – Nelux Apex – is located 20 miles away from Las Vegas. The travellers can navigate on the sand dunes and rugged roads of this region with experienced guides who will give directions and inform the people with him about the scenic routes. The travellers will get a chance to closely observe the native desert wildlife.

Price: US$432 (Per Person)

For more details, kindly visit the webpage here.

#3. You might have had plenty of wine but do you know its history and how it’s made? Get to Nandi Hills for all your answers. (Thrillophilia.com)

Thrillophilia, an online website that hand-picks the best activities at every destination from local suppliers, offers to its customers wine tour in Nandi Hills, near Bengaluru. It’s one of the rare places in India where travellers can learn the art of wine-making and get the real idea of understanding a good quality of wine.The vineyard is spread over 400 acres in the sloping green hills surrounded by beautiful scenery. This will be a 3 hours activity comprising of video presentations and a tour with the complete practical explanation and demonstration of processes carried out for manufacturing wine. The travellers will be allowed to sample five different forms of wine amidst pleasant music. Lunch overlooking the vineyard will be provided to them.

Price: 840 INR (Per Person)

For more details and booking this tour, click on this webpage.

#4. Bibap Show in Seoul (Klook.com)

Hong Kong based Klook, founded in 2014, was established with an aim to provide travel-related service to English-speaking and travel enthusiasts.It offers fun and thrilling activities in 21 countries.

Do you know what’s unique about ‘Bibap Show’? Hosted in Seoul, Bibap Show quite distinctively combines cooking, break dancing, martial arts and singing. This new concept has been named by the cast as ‘Eatertainment’. It is a theatrical performance based on Korean dish performed by talented actors who display their skills in the kitchen area while interacting with the audience all the time. ‘Bibap Show’ has gained international audience very quickly. Since it is a non-verbal show with the use of memes language is not a barrier. The show has elements of both humour and surprise in it.

Price:  US$24- US$34 (Per Person)

For more details and booking tickets, click here.

#5. Walk 13-feet underwater on the ocean bed to enjoy the aquatic life (Triposo.com)

Last on the list is Triposo: a travel guide that has listed more than 15000 destinations in 200 countries. A unique experience that this website offers to its customers is ‘Underwater Sea Walking’. The travellers will get to enjoy the safe and fascinating 20-minute walk on the ocean bed (10-13 feet deep) underwater. They will get an opportunity to witness underwater plant life, corals and beautiful schools of fishes around them. These travellers don’t need to know/learn swimming. A simple training of a few minutes will allow you to be a part of this interesting activity.

Price: US$47.85 (Per Person)

For more details and booking tickets, click on this webpage.

How many of these experiential activities would you like to add to your bucket list?

The post 5 Stunning experiences on Activity Planning Sites that you won’t believe are for real appeared first on TravHQ.

Hong Kong based travel activities startup Klook.com had recently secured $1.5 million seed round from new investors Shuren Hu and Tencent’s senior vice president Wu Xiaoguang. To in-bound & out-bound travellers visit most countries in APAC, Klook presents diverse travel experiences at discounted rates. So you could get anything from an exclusively priced ticket to Disneyland or a discounted ticket to Singapore flyer.

While Klook has been primarily focussing on inbound travellers, we believe that it also presents a wide range of options to outbound travellers visiting the countries covered by Klook. Our founding partner, Daksh Sharma caught-up with Klook’s co-founder at the RISE Conference for a quick chat on the startup’s journey and the road ahead.

Excerpts from our conversation with Eric.

What inspired you guys to start Klook?

The founding team are avid travelers, despite we were in busy in banking jobs.  We would spontaneously plan getaways once we have a chance by booking flights and hotels easily online…but we soon realized that the most time consuming is actually looking for things-to-do at the best value.  If we planned ahead to research – it takes a lot of time.  If we are spontaneous in booking when we are at the destination, we often felt getting overcharged by local travel agents.  The idea came to start a venture that will facilitate discovery + booking of things-to-do whether you’re planning before departure or when you’re at the destination with mobile app along with instant confirmation and exclusive deals.

For a startup that’s just about a year old and operates from Hong Kong how challenging is it to manage expectations of travellers across South East Asia?

All of the operators we work with are the best ones carefully sourced by our team of travel curators – making sure they deliver high quality services.  At the same time, we have a full fledged customer service team to support.

That’s the entire Klook team posing on their recent team holiday

You had secured $1.5 million investment some months back. How are the funds being utilized as of now.

We are really just starting to use the funds as Klook has been growing organically without much marketing spend.  Going forward, we would invest more in technology as well as marketing campaigns.  Many travel brands and local attractions are eager to collaborate with Klook in co-marketing as we bring them “social capital” with our excellent original content creation.

Who are your active competitors?

Certainly Tripadvisor is one of the major competitor after their acquisition of Viator.  But given online / mobile booking penetration rate is still so low (at less than 8%), we find that more players in the industry actually help educate the market that activities CAN be booked online / mobile.

Which are the most popular cities/activities on Klook?

As Klook launched Hong Kong, Singapore and Macau as the first 3 cities back in Sep-2014 – these are the most popular right now.  But we are also seeing fast ramp up of Japan, Thailand and Taiwan.

Generally what’s the trend you see – Is it more inbound traffic or outbound international traveller traffic that you see on Klook?

We focus more on inbound traffic and we see that as our unique positioning given the fact that Klook platform is designed and catered for both native English and Chinese-speaking travelers, which we believe capture 80% of the travel market.

Tell us some of the growth challenges that you foresee at Klook.

Similar to many travel companies, maintaining reasonable user acquisition cost is tricky.  However, we are glad to have cracked it.  Having quickly established as a leading voice in travel, Klook is able to join forces with many leading lifestyle / travel brands to collaborate.

Do you have any plans for geographic expansion in the coming months?

We plan to cover remaining destinations in Asia Pacific by end of the year.

How is the startup ecosystem in Hong Kong and what are your future funding plans.

Ecosystem is definitely catching up in Hong Kong as investors start to see a handful of successful cases.  Many people argue that Hong Kong market is too small, which is indeed true but it has its own advantages for some specific sectors such as logistics, fintech, travel – which have always been Hong Kong’s core competencies.  For example, Hong Kong is the No.1 most traveled city in the world, which makes a lot of sense for a homegrown travel company to successfully emerge into a global brand.

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The much awaited 2 day Rise Conference kicks-off in Hong Kong next week on July 31 – August 1 2015 at the HKCC (Hong Kong Convention Centre). For those of you are not aware, RISE is the first ever tech-summit in Asia brought to you by the same team that organizes Web Summit, held annually in Dublin every November. The event gives a fantastic opportunity to hear and meet exciting startups from across the globe that are solving business & consumer problems.

The inaugural edition of RISE conference also has a line-up of Travel startups from countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, USA and Australia. Here is our ultimate list of 7 startups exhibiting their travel prowess at RISE.

Image Credits: Rise Conference Facebook Page

Travelog.me, Singapore

Singapore based Travelog is an iPhone only mobile travel guide helping you to plan your next trip in an easy way. By downloading the app, you can join a community of like-minded travellers, bloggers, local experts and receive tailored recommendations on top things to do.

We will be keen to understand how are they are different from similar services and where exactly do they fit in the traveller’s cycle?

Wanderlust, Australia

Australian startup, Wanderlust claims to build a travel tribe consisting of strangers from different countries enabling travellers to take help when in need. Can they change they way we travel? We’ll find out at RISE

Jamjar, Australia

Another startup from Australia, Jamjar is a travel discovery app for the explorers who are on a constant quest to find out the most happening places. They seem to be focussed on the Australian region for now but we will be keen to chat-up with the Jamjar team for more info.

Klook, Hong Kong

Representing host country Hong Kong, Klook caught our attention from the list. They are providing unique travel experiences across entire APAC at discounted rates. For instance, Bicycling experience at Kyoto or exploring Bangkok on a Scooter.

However, the competition seems to be very high for services providing offbeat and custom travel experiences. We will know Klook’s future roadmap soon.

Weestay, Hong Kong

Weestay is also from Hong Kong and their single line pitch is that they combine CouchSurfing & Airbnb removing the element of cost from between. Simply speaking, you can find free accommodation via network of your friends using Weestay.

Their focus seems to be backpackers who are on a shoe-string budget. Who else are they targeting? We’ll learn more at RISE.

HotelQuickly, Hong Kong

HotelQuickly is the Uber for hotels in APAC providing last minute dynamic deals on your bookings. We had recently reviewed an Indian startup RoomsTonite that seems to be pretty similar in-terms of overall offering. More on HotelQuickly coming your way pretty soon!

Tripverse, USA

Completing the list is Tripverse, a travel startup coming all the way from United States. Tripverse is an offline readable itinerary viewer that makes creating, viewing, and sharing travel plans simple and easy. There is no dearth of itinerary planning apps but we are optimistic that Tripverse has a unique positioning and target market. We’ll discover more of that, when we catch-up.

So if you are a travel startup coming to RISE, we will be keen to meet you in person, hear your stories and understand how you are making tripping experience better  If we have missed you out from the above list, please drop us a note at editor@travhq.com.

You can find more updates from RISE here.

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