Platform for Partnership: Sector Dialogue on Tourism for Sustainable Development
Summary
This session, moderated by Prof. Dr. Willy Legrand, was the third and final session hosted by Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) at ITB Berlin 2026. It centered on the BMZ's Sector Dialogue on Tourism for Sustainable Development, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in March 2026 (founded 2016). The session opened with a panel featuring Benjamin Kudler (Head of Private Engagement, BMZ), Dr. Nicole Häusler (Professor of Sustainable Tourism Management, INAT/Center for Sustainable Tourism, and Sector Dialogue steering committee member), and Petra Thomas (Managing Director, Forum Anders Reisen).
Kudler framed BMZ's motivation: Germany is the last major country with a standalone cabinet-ranking Ministry for International Development, and tourism is central to its work because 1 in 10 jobs worldwide are created by tourism, including in Germany's partner countries. He acknowledged BMZ faces shrinking budgets and must 'do more with less' while leveraging established results. Three achievements were highlighted: the co-developed e-learning module on human rights in tourism (free, multilingual, available across the entire value chain); coordinated COVID-19 response through the dialogue platform; and a position paper on women in tourism in the Global South, presented to the SPD's parliamentary tourism committee.
The session then featured three partnership interviews. First, Zay ZinMai (co-founder, ZinMai Experiences) and Veronika Blach (Senior Program Developer, TUI Care Foundation) presented a Chiang Mai, Thailand initiative integrating Burmese migrants into the local tourism economy. ZinMai Experiences co-developed two community-led experiences in a pilot phase, is now scaling to four more, targeting support for 10 Myanmar resource persons, 10 Thai tourist guides, 15 small businesses, and 20 cross-sector partnerships. The TUI Care Foundation, now operating 11 programs (up from 4 at launch) across 30 destinations over 10 years, supports the project through finance, tourism expertise, industry market linkages, and public-private partnerships. As of early 2026, ZinMai was already receiving destination management company bookings.
Second, Katharina Stechl (Program Manager, Roundtable Human Rights in Tourism) and Martin Wiest (CEO, Tourvest; Chairman, Go Vacation) discussed a 2025 Tourism Impact Assessment in South Africa. The assessment involved 31 on-site consultations and interviews with over 80 stakeholders, covering Cape Town, Johannesburg, and the Greater Kruger areas. It assessed workers' rights, job creation and upskilling, child protection, and fair contracting along the mid-range group travel value chain, aligned with international due diligence standards including the German Supply Chain Act (Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz). Wiest, who has lived in South Africa since 1983, noted initial skepticism that converted into appreciation for the external perspective. He called for the findings to be more visible and for such assessments to happen more frequently across the industry.
Third, Tatjana Peters (Project Manager, Futurista) and Thomas Bohlander (Managing Director, Gibico, a tour operator founded in 1978) discussed a new joint initiative to create a uniform methodology for calculating local value creation in tourism destinations — addressing the fundamental question of how much tourist spending actually stays at the destination. Bohlander noted Gibico operates round trips with 25-30 local partners and works in approximately 100 destinations globally. He observed that companies currently quote widely varying retention figures (60%, 70%, 75%, 80%) without agreed standards, creating a marketing arms race. The project recently received government and NGO support. Bohlander also used the platform to draw attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Myanmar, directly connecting it to the ZinMai project's context.
Key Takeaways
- •The BMZ Sector Dialogue on Tourism for Sustainable Development turned 10 years old in March 2026, having been established in 2016. Benjamin Kudler (BMZ) described it as a 'trusted, established, and dynamic platform' that has evolved continuously since founding, serving as an interface between industry, civil society, academia, and government policy on sustainable tourism.
- •1 in 10 jobs worldwide are created by tourism, making it a priority sector for the BMZ's international development work. Kudler was explicit that BMZ faces 'shrinking budgets' and must find ways to 'make more with less' by leveraging established results and enabling other actors to carry the work forward.
- •Dr. Nicole Häusler identified a structural gap in tourism compared to sectors like chemistry or medicine: there is no strong institutionalized linkage between tourism researchers and businesses. She called the Sector Dialogue a partial 'translation tool' that helps bring academic findings to operators — but argued the field needs more such mechanisms.
- •A free, multilingual e-learning module on human rights in tourism, developed collaboratively by all Sector Dialogue partners, was highlighted as one of the platform's most impactful tangible outputs. It is designed for employees across the full tourism value chain and is available to any company or association in the sector at no cost.
- •ZinMai Experiences (Chiang Mai, Thailand), co-founded by Zay ZinMai, is scaling from 2 pilot community-led tourism experiences to 6, targeting economic integration of Burmese migrants. Concrete targets include supporting 10 Myanmar resource persons, 10 Thai tourist guides, 15 small businesses, and building 20 partnerships across community, business, and academia. As of early 2026, DMCs were already booking the programs.
- •The TUI Care Foundation has grown from 4 to 11 programs over its 10 years of operation, working across 30 destinations. Veronika Blach emphasized the foundation's model: financial support plus in-house tourism expertise, industry market linkages, and public-private partnerships — while explicitly deferring implementation authority to local partners who hold the contextual knowledge.
- The Roundtable Human Rights in Tourism's 2025 South Africa Tourism Impact Assessment involved 31 on-site consultations and over 80 stakeholder interviews across Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Greater Kruger. The methodology aligns with international due diligence standards and the German Supply Chain Act (Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz), signaling that compliance-driven frameworks are now shaping how European operators engage with supply chain assessments in developing markets.
Transcript
We are back. Okay. The third and final session uh in today's federal ministry for economic cooperation and development the BMET sessions. And that brings us to the heart of the important question. So how does genuine multistakeholder dialogue actually works and what does it produce? We've heard about the sector dialogue a little bit earlier. This is what we're going to uh to develop a bit more. the sector dialogue on tourism for sustainable development that platform that's hosted by the federal ...
