The tourism industry involves many players, both private and public, and draws on the widest possible range of cross-cutting skills. For this reason, and to ensure the success of the Initiative, cooperation mechanisms and public/private partnerships centred on ICTs need to be established. Ministries of tourism, national tourism boards, destinations management organizations, and tourism stakeholders, in cooperation with relevant technical partners, have the opportunity to establish themselves as trustworthy and organized players, and to build up their image to ensure their promotion worldwide.

The pooling of common resources and complementary skills for a collective promotion campaign is one example. Private partners typically bring benefits such as business sense and access to new sources of resources, planning and service-provision skills, training and new technologies. Similarly the private sector benefits from access to new markets, expansion of the services provided and potential productivity gains. Partnerships will be developed throughout the Initiative and will:

• Serve to improve existing tourism products and create new ones;
• Diversify the customer base;
• Expand markets;
• Share best practices;
• Create economies of scale by pooling human, financial and technical resources.