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Busan Connects Through Star Enterprises! 2026 Busan Tourism Star Enterprise Open Innovation Successfully Concludes

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Busan Metropolitan City, led by Mayor Chun Jae-soo, and the Busan Tourism Organization, headed by President Lee Jung-sil, announced that the Busan Tourism Enterprise Support Center, headed by Kim Moon-jun, successfully concluded the 2026 Busan Tourism Star Enterprise Open Innovation at Lotte Hotel Busan on September 11. The event was designed to expand collaboration among companies centered on Star Enterprises and strengthen connections within the local tourism industry.

The event was organized as Busan’s first collaborative platform for open innovation, featuring a certification ceremony for the five Busan Tourism Star Enterprises newly selected this year and bringing together approximately 150 participants from startups, large and mid-sized companies, small business owners, online travel agencies, investment institutions, and other organizations.

During the event, certificates and plaques issued in the name of the Mayor of Busan Metropolitan City were presented. This was followed by a showcase in which Star Enterprises proposed collaborative projects such as joint product development and platform integration, as well as pre-matched one-on-one business meetings and networking sessions. Participating companies discussed a wide range of potential partnerships, including joint projects, investment attraction, and expansion of sales channels, and explored opportunities for collaboration.

The Busan Tourism Star Enterprise program is Busan Metropolitan City’s flagship certification initiative for identifying tourism businesses that can represent Busan, with selected companies receiving intensive support to develop into growth hubs for the local tourism industry.

Since 2021, Busan Metropolitan City and the center have selected and fostered 30 companies. This year, the selection criteria and corporate benefits were strengthened, and five new companies were selected: Nanugi World Co., Ltd., Neulpureunbada Co., Ltd., Deliverd Korea Co., Ltd., FGK Co., Ltd., and S.O.K management.

Beginning this year, the Star Enterprise support program has been restructured from a model focused primarily on financial assistance into a system that supports intercompany collaboration and sustained growth. This event marked the first collaborative program to fully implement the newly reorganized support framework.

Busan Metropolitan City and the center will actively promote a Hub & Spoke cooperation framework by fostering Star Enterprises with strong tourist accessibility and brand competitiveness as growth hubs and connecting startups, large and mid-sized companies, small business owners, online travel agencies, investment institutions, and other participants as collaboration spokes.

By combining the technologies, distribution networks, investment capabilities, and other strengths of participating companies with the tourism content and growth needs of Star Enterprises, Busan will identify new collaboration models and support them in generating tangible outcomes, including joint product development, platform integration, and overseas expansion.

Through this framework, Star Enterprises will gain new growth opportunities, while startups will gain opportunities to demonstrate their technologies and services and enter the market. Small business owners will gain more opportunities to engage with tourists and expand their sales channels. Large and mid-sized companies and online travel agencies will be able to develop differentiated local tourism content and collaboration models, while investment institutions will gain opportunities to identify companies with strong growth potential.

Tourism is an industry that becomes complete only when diverse services such as transportation, accommodation, experiences, food, and shopping are organically connected. Building on this open innovation initiative, Busan Metropolitan City and the center plan to encourage collaboration among companies and create an industrial ecosystem in which tourism services are more closely connected and cooperative partnerships can flourish.

Busan will also link GPS, or Growth, Potential, Scale-up, a customized corporate growth support program based on business diagnostics, with the open innovation initiative so that collaboration outcomes can translate into substantive corporate growth, including the advancement of business models, investment attraction, expansion of sales channels, and overseas market entry.

Through these efforts, Busan plans to create a virtuous cycle in which corporate growth and visitor spending contribute to the revitalization of the local economy.

Kim Kyung-duk, Vice Mayor for Administrative Affairs of Busan Metropolitan City, said, “The productivity of the tourism industry comes not only from the performance of individual companies, but from a collaborative ecosystem in which companies are organically connected with one another and content is seamlessly linked with services.”

He added, “Busan Metropolitan City will foster Star Enterprises as growth hubs while actively supporting intercompany collaboration so that local startups and small business owners can grow together. We will provide visitors with seamless travel experiences and businesses with continuous opportunities for growth.”