Partnering for Impact: Tourism and International Cooperation Driving Sustainable Development

This opening session of ITB Berlin 2026's Blue Stage program — a three-hour series developed in partnership with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and GIZ — examined how tourism and international cooperation can jointly drive sustainable development. The session opened with a keynote from Michael Krake, who leads private sector cooperation as well as environment, climate, and nature at the BMZ, followed by a panel featuring Dr. Ingo Burmester (CEO of hotel division at DTO Group), Alexander Panczuk / Manuel Ferrer (head of program and external communication at TUI Care Foundation), and Hamin Bentaha (president of Morocco's National Confederation of Tourism, CNT), moderated by Prof. Dr. Willy Legrand of IU International University of Applied Sciences.

Krake opened by citing a World Bank study showing that across low- and middle-income countries, tourism ranks as a top-five sector for job and income creation, and he highlighted a structural labor challenge: roughly 1.2 billion young people will enter the global labor market over the next 10 years, but current projections provide jobs for only about half of them. One in ten jobs globally depends on tourism. BMZ currently runs over 50 projects worldwide with a tourism component, implemented jointly with the private sector, and cooperates with roughly 60 partner countries.

Manuel Ferrer of the TUI Care Foundation detailed the foundation's presence in over 30 countries with over 80 projects. He used Cabo Verde (Cape Verde) as a case study: the country graduated from the UN's Least Developed Countries list in 2007, and the island of Sal demonstrates how hotel-industry development drove infrastructure investment, skills development, and entrepreneurial opportunity. Ferrer also described a hydroponics / field-to-fork program in an arid destination where food production must meet hotel demand. The TUI Academy — built on GIZ course content and augmented with TUI expertise on animal welfare and turtle protection — was signed into an MOU with the vocational training authority in Zanzibar and the Zanzibar Ministry of Culture and Heritage, with a Swahili version being rolled out.

Inggo Burmester of DTO Group argued that 'crisis is the new normal,' referencing the Israel-Iran conflict as a recent example, and said organized travel's core USP is now safety and reliability during crises. He shared a formative experience opening a resort on a virgin island in the Maldives, where staff were drawn from 26 different nationalities, requiring a multi-cultural co-living and team-composition guide built from listening to the workers themselves. DTO also built schools, kindergartens, and housing for local communities around that property.

Hamin Bentaha of Morocco's CNT reported that Morocco reached 20 million tourists in 2025/2026, making it Africa's number-one destination. Tourism employs 800,000 people directly and 3.5 million indirectly, and in some countries the sector represents 25% of employment and over 10% of GDP. He noted that Morocco's tourism roadmap — begun around 2002 — deliberately chose to diversify beyond Agadir rather than concentrating on one resort hub. He stressed that around Marrakesh, one of Morocco's most successful cities, the surrounding region remains one of the country's poorest, and called for collaboration to redirect impact to rural areas (Atlas Mountains, Saharan desert villages, coastal cities like Safi). GIZ partnership has helped develop new rural itineraries. He stated that in a pilot program, roughly 300-350 families were impacted around Marrakesh and argued the model could realistically 'add two zeros' to that number at scale.

Michael Krake closed by identifying over-tourism as a systemic risk — once natural resources are damaged, the entire tourism value proposition collapses — and called for institutional anchoring of successful projects in national tourism policies rather than leaving them as isolated pilots. He also cited Albania, Georgia, and Cambodia as countries where tourism exceeds 20% of GDP. The BMZ's 'Import Promotion Desk' was cited as a concrete matchmaking tool connecting service providers from developing countries with German tour operators like DER Touristik and TUI.