Video-sharing platform ‘Welcome to the World’ has been named the first ever winner of the ATM Draper-Aladdin Startup Competition, which saw a selection of the region’s travel and tourism start-ups deliver pitches on the ATM Travel Tech Stage for the chance to secure up to $500,000.
A total of 15 finalists gave presentations in front of Arabian Travel Market (ATM) 2022’s five-strong panel of industry judges.
‘Welcome to the World’ aims to solve the problem of high rates of commission charged by online travel agencies (OTA).
The platform enables tourism businesses and travel influencers to drive direct bookings commission-free by sharing videos.
The investment gained as part of the first ever ATM Draper-Aladdin Startup Competition follows $264,000 already secured as part of the firm’s pre-seed round.
Commenting on the win, Founder and CEO Stefanie Schachtschabel said that the earned funds will be used to build state-of-the-art technologies, such as AI, to monetize the company’s data, and also to scale the business to 48 destinations.
