About the International Chamber of Travel & Tourism:

The International Chamber of Travel & Tourism (ICTT) is a private-public business group that will:

• represent the interests of its travel industry member companies, assisting members with the best ways to maximize their tangible and non-tangible assets, and improve and prepare members for a world in transition;
• ICTT will provide a variety of support services to the ICTT membership and cooperation partners for the advancement and future growth of the Travel & Tourism (T&T) Industry;
• ICTT promotes sustainable and responsible tourism, availing itself to the UN Sustainable Development Goals;
• ICTT has been organized and regards itself as a facilitator peer-to-peer partner to all other T&T top-level organizations including regional, national or international organizations such as (e.g. UNWTO, WTTC, PATA). ICTT is understood to be supplementary and complementary in its function, and cooperative efforts rather than competitive in its relations with peer-to-peer members.

Mission Statement:

• ICTT welcomes all T&T industry businesses and organizations, both established ones and ‚pioneers’/start-ups to share the ICTT values. ICTT acts as a catalyst to help improve each member’s performance, competitive edge, and the industry’s political power through renewing and intensifying private-business/government cooperation, facilitating global collaboration, and forming new cross-border and cross-industry alliances.
• ICTT provides custom made services and entrepreneurial support for T&T ‚pioneers’/startups, particularly during the most vulnerable phases of their company’s growth, through ICTT’s ‚T&T Global Incubator‘.
• Each ICTT member and partner will be encouraged to share smart business practices and market intelligence providing the practical tools, platforms and services with an ongoing stimulating educational platform and shared knowledge exchange.
• The ICTT approach is global and overarching, easily accessible and extremely user-friendly for anyone in or related to the T&T World Community. This is accomplished by accessing digital services that give ICTT members and partners the inter-active connection and management tools to becoming more effective and efficient in every aspect of travel in a competitive and complex industry.
• ICTT members and partners will find a very practical way that is transparent, lean, and a low cost measurable investment. The ultimate benefit of becoming a recognized ICTT member is the inclusion of your business or organization on the world stage and to support and enhance the commercial success of members and partners with the emphasis of intercultural understanding, collaboration, and the forging for a peaceful planet by getting to know your world neighbors. Cross-border trade, as an equitable and ethically justifiable business, is a crucial element to elevating T&T as the World’s foremost Peace Industry.

Establish ICTT values:

• ICTT is convinced that by providing the features and benefits of becoming an ICCT member with the global connections to the entire T&T Industry across all borders will cause a ripple effect to take place resulting in making the most meaningful and greatest economic and environmental impact on the world community.
• ICTT capitalizes on intercultural learning, understanding and awareness resulting in respect and appreciation of each of the ICTT members and their commonality and individuality, including ICTT’s commitment towards our common global natural and cultural heritage. The ICTT will embrace and promote aggressively the UN 17 Sustainable Goals.
• ICTT regards T&T both as a pivotal service industry and a cross-sector ‚communication hub‘, but also as a multitasking ‚tool‘ to enhance cities, regions and countries to ‚branded destinations‘.
• The stimulation of international collaboration is at the heart of ICTT’s varied member services. Fully aware of T&T as a prime industry to further sustainable development, create new jobs, and enhance destination awareness, identity and image,
• ICTT emphasizes the specific concerns of MSMEs, as they represent the vast majority of companies, jobs, and income in each distinctive part of T&T, and are lacking global leadership representation and support.
• ICTT believes in peer-to-peer co-operation with other top-level organizations and government authorities, via partnerships and strategic alliances, thus strengthening the excellence of product quality and brand equity (identity, perception, image), creating economic, ecological and cultural synergies and avoiding overlapping activities and duplication.
• ICTT is keenly aware of the potentially specific accountability of T&T Inbound businesses, regarding the potentially negative side-effects of T&T on the ecological, social, and economic balance of destinations.

ICTT’s higher purpose is beyond corporate interests:

Rather than a mere organization, ICTT regards itself as a ‚living organism‘, which means far more than just the sum of its parts. Purposeful and intentional, ICTT has dedicated itself to enhance the tangible and non-tangible assets of its members and partners and to strengthen the positive social, ecological and economic impact of sustainable and responsible T&T as a peace-making industry, through:

• supporting the International Association of Peace through Travel & Tourism (IAPTT), to reach the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (see separate document);
• creating and solidifying the awareness of ICTT as the industry’s unique organism to sensitize governments for the requirements of a fragmented T&T industry;
• cross-cooperating with ‚peace‘ industries outside T&T, their organizations, and government/non-government authorities, accordingly;
• forging strategic alliances (supplementary and complementary ‚clusters‘) with industries that may be regarded as closely intertwined with T&T, like Renewable Energy, Waste Treatment, Health, Safety & Security, and Education &Training, in order to improve the performance and competitiveness of ICTT members and T&T destinations as places to live, to work, to invest and to travel.

Vision Statement:

• By 2022 ICTT will be recognized as the most prestigious, accountable and effective hands-on T&T representative entity. By taking the leadership role, ICTT, including its members and partners, will become the gathering place for bringing the T&T collective wisdom and professional experiences together to provide the most comprehensive support system of corporate and institutional interconnectedness.
• The ICTT will have contributed to achieving the success of reaching the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals by its members and partners by 2030.

ICTT Industry Features & Benefits at a glance:

• Provide an influential global voice for ICTT members and partners.
• Provide ‚Global Tourism Incubator‘ services for entrepreneurial ‚pioneers’/startups.
• Create new and valuable networking opportunities.
• Encourage Local/Regional/Global collaboration.
• Become the Hub for Multi one-stop market sector research and intelligence exchange.
• Provide pragmatic, interconnected intelligence tools through filtering key components out of a predominant accumulation of data & information.
• Have access to the a comprehensive collection of sector studies & reports (e.g. World Travel & Tourism Directory — WTTD, an extensive T&T business directory).
• Provide a peer-to-peer platform enabling well-structured knowledge exchange and access to the global networks and databases and case studies (e.g. TRINET).
• Have access to the global network and database of tourism & hospitality consultants, professionals, and experts, i.e. expert search & find service (e.g. ‚Tourism Brains‘).
• Establish a level playing field for all size of ICTT members and partners.
• Use accessible & affordable services & tools for all ICTT members and partners.
• Provide a well-selected industry support system of the most helpful and current business services, both paid and free.
• Benefit of a voting democratic system for all ICTT members on global sector issues.
• Share the assets of political & media representation and lobbying of ICTT members and partners.
• Organize an annual ICTT Conference Summit Event.
• Ensure ICTT representation at ITB and WTM.
• The ICTT will persuade all of the established T & T organizations to sign and apply a common unified commitment to advance the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG).