A new collaboration between Tourism Kamloops and TRU is hoping to help students get business ideas come to life and help the industry at the same time.

The $50,000 donation is going towards a new Tourism Innovation Lab for TRU students to develop ideas for new businesses.

Once they’ve done that, they make their pitch to an expert panel, much like the TV show Dragon’s Den.

If the pitch is successful, it becomes an actual business as Dean of Adventure, Culinary Arts and Tourism, Doug Booth explains. “Those that are seen to have great potential, they will go into a kind of an incubation centre and they will have a chance to develop their programs and proposals into hopefully fully fledged businesses.”

Booth says if the business gets the green light, it’ll happen fast.

“You must understand that these businesses can be up and running in three to six months and they can be contributing significantly to the local industry in a whole host of ways.”

Booth is more than impressed with the talent in the program. “They can be contributing to the local economy, the local businesses in way we can’t even imagine because it’s the creativity of the students which is coming to the fore here.”

He continued, “As a lecturer myself and teaching our students, they’re the ones who are creative, they’re the ones that have got the ideas, they’re doing things that we haven’t even imagined.”

One goal of the program is to keep students in the region, working in the Kamloops tourism industry, an industry that has a 500 million dollar a year economic impact and sees 1.8 million visitors.