In the past couple of months, most if not all of the blogposts, articles, researches and everything else are related to Covid-19. How is life going to change post-Covid? Is homeschooling a better option for children nowadays? How work efficiency got affected during the pandemic? All these are already familiar headlines of researches, articles, blogs.

Everyday life has changed and doesn’t matter we were ready for this change or not, we have to make some adjustments to our daily routines, to the way we go shopping, to planning how and where to travel to.

Interestingly enough Kolba’s current project, “Future Skills and Jobs” is about helping the youth in Armenia to prepare for the changes in work. We used Foresight methodology to map the existing and upcoming tendencies of job changes in Armenia’s 4 regions.

Let’s talk about the one that has been affected the most: the tourism sector.

Tourism was one of the topic areas during our research back in 2019. The team of government workers, public and private sector representatives and tourism experts have gathered under one roof to discuss and map the future transformation of the tourism sector in the Armenian regional setting. The region that was on the map was Lori.

Fast forward several months, it was time to announce idea competition to give people a chance to invest in the development of this field with their own ideas and solutions. A call for startup ideas for the tourism sector to be implemented in the Lori region was announced. We had over 100 exciting applications and it was very hard for the jury to choose from.

Currently, the process is slowly (but steadily) moving forward, the shortlisted candidates have been working on turning their ideas into reality with Kolba’s support. Apart from giving a seed funding ($3,000 to 5,000) to realize the projects, Kolba provides guidance and support from its network of professionals. It’s amazing to see that just by connecting the right people at the right time, simple ideas spark, making everything more innovative and agile.

Last month, we had an introductory call with the shortlisted candidates. They met one another (of course over a zoom meeting :)), heard each other’s ideas, and even suggested to help one another. That’s one thing we love about Kolba – no matter the setting, if you do a citizen-led project /when the people’s input is all that matters/ you see great synergies that are being created right on the spot and that’s when you know you’re on the right track.

Tourism sector ideas are very promising – stating from Lori touristic map to virtual tours through AR and VR technologies, to introducing Artificial Intelligence to ensure a safe environment for the hospitality industry.

We will be sharing more details from the projects. Stay tuned and follow our pages not to miss out on the stories from the startupers and their adventures.