• What do you consider the main advantages and disadvantages of such a DMO joint-venture fund? Owen Eagles, Managing Director, ANZCRO During the early 1990s, one of New Zealand’s NTO strategies was a joint-venture fund to stimulate cooperative destination marketing offshore. The concept was to match private sector contributions dollar for dollar in campaigns that would produce measurable sales. At the time, ANZCRO (www.anzcro.com.au) was starting out as a new wholesaler of New Zealand travel arrangements in the Australian market. One of the defining moments in the development of ANZCRO into a business that today generates over $75 million annual turnover worldwide was securing $250,000 in joint-venture funding from the NTO. As you will see, this was a very hands-on initiative, and so once the JV was approved the NTO did not play an active role. The plan was to target a sector of the Australian market that ANZCRO argued had been a missed opportunity for New Zealand country people. Australia is such a large country that destination marketers had tended to focus their efforts on city people. This case describes what might be considered an old-fashioned approach to destination marketing, but also one that provided a measurable return to the NTO, ANZCRO, and other partners