Smart tourism: Paris opens its Welcome City Lab

The Welcome City Lab, a creative space promoting tomorrow's tourism in Paris area. 

The Welcome City Lab was officially inaugurated on Sept. 9, 2014, in Paris, France, in presence of Mayor Anne Hidalgo. 
This innovative space dedicated to tourism innovation is located rue de Rennes (Saint Germain des Prés).
Initiated almost a year ago, the Welcome City Lab project aims to 'invent tomorrow's tourism' and is part of as part of the Paris Région Lab initiative to promote digital innovation to bolster tourism in Paris area. 

The four missions of Welcome City Lab are:

1. Incubation services, supporting start-ups in their efforts to design new ways of travelling; 
2. Experimentation, facilitating scale tests in collaboration with Lab partners to assess tourism products and services;
3. Academy, educating on the tourism sectors and raising awareness of the potentialities of technological innovation for tourism, and 
4. Intelligence, identifying  trends in the field of tourism innovation in France as well as abroad.

In total, about thirty start-ups are currently hosted by the Lab.

Through the Welcome City Lab, Paris intends to become not only a capital city for tourism but also a capital city for tourism innovation. 

www.welcomecitylab.com