France and South Korea Cooperate on Tourism Innovation and Education

By Catherine GERMIER-HAMEL
Whereas France has been recently re-branded as a "startup nation", is there anything innovative, new and/or smart France can be proud of in the field of travel and tourism? And the answer is: absolutely (yes, I'm French)!
At least, this is what I intended to highlight during the 2nd OCOVA Forum in Asia hosted by the GSIPA - Gangneung Science & Industry Promotion Agency, on Oct. 16, 2019, under the theme of Tourism and the 4th Industrial Revolution.
In my presentation, I introduced French innovative inititiaves towards smart sustainable tourism, including France Tourisme Lab, the national network of incubators and accelerators in tourism, and tech for good initiatives that can be applied to tourism sectors.
As of today, 7 structures are part of France City Lab: 

• Welcome City Lab (Paris), for urban tourism, 
• Slow Tourisme Lab (Troyes), for slow tourism,
• Open Tourisme Lab (Nîmes),
• Provence Travel Innovation (Marseille), for tourist mobility,
• Tourisme InnovationLab (Angers), for pre-incubation and student projects, 
• Œnotourisme Lab (Châlons-en-Champagne), for wine tourism, 
• Smart Tourisme Lab (Tours), for heritage intelligence and art of living.

Then my French colleague Louis HAAG presented the project Herost, a global online platform and network for co-creating, sharing, and promoting fair, sustainable travel experiences aimed at elevating and empowering ocal communities.  
During the Forum, a partnership agreement was signed between GSIPA and Grand Sud Formation, a tourism high school based in Toulouse, France. 
The Forum OCOVA has been organized annually since 2004 in Les Orres, a French ski resort located in the Hautes-Alpes department in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. It has been providing a venue for networking and knowledge exchange on smart technologies and innovation, particularly in mountain areas. The Asian edition of the OCOVA Forum was launched in 2018 in Gangneung, South-Korea.