MT Lab: passing the torch for innovation

by Pierre Bellerose

In the fall of 2021, I announced to my colleagues on the MT Lab Board of Directors that I was beginning my last year as a member of the Board and as President. After 7 years of involvement, including more than 5 as President of MT Lab, I felt it was time to reshuffle our governance deck and bring in some new energy.

In fact, since the summer of 2015, three players – Tourisme Montréal, UQAM and the City of Montréal – have wanted to create a new innovation tool together. That’s how I got involved, along with Paul Arseneault of UQAM and others, in the creation of an incubator specialized in tourism: the MT Lab. I’ve been Chairman of the Board since the beginning of 2017. All these years during which I have never ceased to defend innovation in tourism, the startups I greatly admire, as well as our industry, which I hope will be innovative and resilient.

Our first challenge was to convince major industry partners to get on board in the first few months. I’d like to thank Tourisme Montréal, Air Canada, Musée de la Civilisation, ITHQ, Transat, Alliance de l’industrie touristique du Québec, UQAM and many others for believing early on in the process of setting up the tool that became MT Lab. We were thus able to secure a financial base, but above all we were assured of being in tune with the innovation needs of major business groups.

Subsequently, the arrival of our General Manager, Martin Lessard, was a milestone, as he was able to put together a winning team, which quickly enabled us (as early as 2017) to welcome, mentor and help grow a first cohort of startups – in 5 years, we’ve welcomed around a hundred. An exceptional result! I’d like to thank the whole team, those who are still with us and those who were pivotal early stages – Simon and Florence spring to mind – and who are now moving on to other professional horizons. It’s so stimulating to be part of this ecosystem!

These years of involvement have been marked by this famous pandemic which, as you can well imagine, has hit the tourism innovation community very hard. The MT Lab ecosystem proved exceptionally resilient.

The support of the Ministry of Tourism, thanks to a contribution of $10 million over five (5) years, announced in the spring of 2021, has dramatically confirmed support for the MT Lab and tourism innovation in Quebec.

Now that MT Lab is in good financial health and has reached maturity, the time has come for me to pass on the torch so that new energies can continue and enhance the work. So it was with a sense of duty accomplished that I stepped down as a member of the MT Lab Board of Directors and as President at the Annual General Meeting of members on October 26, 2022. I’m proud of what the team and the Board of Directors have accomplished. I would also like to underline the quality and commitment of the members of the Board of Directors from the outset. A special thanks to our friend Paul Arseneault, who has been involved in every MT Lab battle for the past 7 years!

Dear friends of the great MT Lab team, it’s been a pleasure and a privilege to work with you on this project, which has now become a key player in our ecosystem.

For my part, this is not goodbye. I’ll never be far from the MT Lab. And I’ll continue to be involved in a number of tourism and cultural organizations, as I always have been. Long live MT Lab!

Pierre Bellerose