They are the teams who participated in the inaugural WITovation Entrepreneur Bootcamp and dared to pitch their ideas to the crème de la crème of the travel investment community at the sixth Web In Travel conference as part of the WIT Start-Up Pitch.

For the second time in three years, the judges picked the dark horse rather than the crowd favourite. But their decision made sense. Eco Tours is a proven business model, with an extremely go-get’ em founder who lets nothing stand in her way. She had the most realistic business projections and was heavily invested in the business herself, and it was her vision that won them over at the end of the day.

Passion for the industry/business/idea has been the theme of past years. But this year, stamina was the buzz word associated with entrepreneurship.

The second most important thing, telling thing that people associated with entrepreneurship, one that we haven’t heard much about in two years, was how important the people that you hire are to your success.

“Pay bananas, get monkeys” said Morten Lund, archangel investor, who was a keynote speaker at the conference and bootcamp.

“Good people can make bad ideas a success,” said Lund. But equally, he suggested, bad people can make a mess of good ideas.

I guess that’s why the panel was torn – between good ideas and good people and the good people won. The crowd favourite team, Forget Boundaries, or FOBO for short, had a great idea. But they don’t yet have a comprehensive team or business model despite the fact that they have already won investor funding. Eco Travel on the other hand is an accredited travel agency, has been in business for a year, and has fairly sound brick and mortar business prospects for a niche industry, beyond that of the online environment.

The other competitor, ComeSingapore, had a brave team and an even braver business idea – taking on the Singapore Tourism Board’s yoursingapore.com to provide bespoke recommendations to tourists to Singapore.  Their projections were ambitious and reflected their youthful exuberance for the business concept.

At the end of the day, Eco Tours walked away with an iPad, a booth from ITB Asia for 2011,  a panel of mentors from Silicon Valley to Singapore, as well professional assistance to put together an investment plan. Stay tuned to WIT 2011 to see how they succeed.