The South Tyrol Association of Tourism Organisations (known as State Association for Travel Organisations from 1981 until 1994), LTS for short, is the umbrella association for tourist boards in South Tyrol. LTS currently represents 70 tourist boards at a political level and at all important state level tourism committees. LTS is managed by a board of 11 members including a president and two vice presidents.
The central functions of LTS can be broken down into institutional activities; information provision, IT support, and software development as well as training for tourism organisation employees.
In addition to its institutional functions, LTS supports member organisations with any concerns in day-to-day business, represents members' interests at committees and advisory boards, implements state-wide tourism projects, concludes framework agreements and conventions, coordinates state-wide, standardised tourism solutions, carries out analyses and assessments, works with other trade associations and tourism partners and is politically committed to a balanced financing of tourism organisations.
Information is disseminated through regular newsletters and circulars on tourism themes as well as news about IT content. Furthermore LTS supports tourism organisations with advice about legal and contractual concerns. LTS’s IT support covers the entire IT spectrum including hardware and software as well as an IT telephone hotline. In addition to this LTS continually develops the TIC-Web back office software and supports and advises tourism organisations on networking. In terms of further training, LTS offers its members needs based and value for money seminars on subjects such as tourism, marketing, communication, internet/social media and personal competencies.
In 1999 the LTS cooperative, LTS Gen. for short, was founded to outsource the fast growing demand for IT services, additional training as well as accountancy from the LTS association. The founding of this association has subsequently proved to be successful.