Abstract

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) provide governments and businesses with a unique cooperation framework for mutual gain. The major goal of this paper is to identify the challenges influencing the establishment and sustainability of PPPs in the tourism sector in Zimbabwe. Nine variables impeding the establishment and sustainability of PPPs were identified from a critical review of existing literature. A survey of public and private sector organisations that participated in the 2013 edition of the Zimbabwe International Tourism and Travel Fair confirmed that only three of the variables in the theoretical framework were challenges. Consequently, the paper offers a tentative empirical model of tourism PPP establishment and sustainability with two sets of independent variables i.e. challenges and other variables. The academic implications for the study are that future studies should test the tentative model and investigate the determinants of successful PPP establishment and sustainability in general. At least two public policy implications for the government and its agencies can be drawn from this study. To successfully court businesses into PPPs the government needs to, ideally, take into consideration private sector views in fine-tuning its PPP policies. The government also needs to educate its administrative agencies to appreciate that PPPs can be established in any area including mega events and destination marketing.

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