This year there are few foreigners who come to spend their holidays with us, but there are also few Italians who go abroad. It was inevitable that the pandemic would change habits even during the holidays. And that's what's happening for better or for worse. For the better with the rediscovery of proximity tourism that pushes Italians to take holidays close to home or in our country in any case. In the bad because the cities of art – from Venice to Florence and Rome – are crying because the disappearance of international tourism is bringing them to their knees. Who knows, however, whether it is an opportunity to thoroughly review a tourism model based too much on "hit and run" and little on the quality and planning of flows. This is what we talk about with Franco Iseppi, president of the Italian Touring Club after a life spent in Rai of which he also became general manager and in which he lived unforgettable days in close collaboration with Enzo Biagi. Here is the interview he granted to FIRSTonline
President, in Italy on August 2020th XNUMX and more generally the summer season after the lockdown and in times of necessary social distancing, tourism is expected to be very different from the past: very few foreigners in Italy, few Italians abroad, half-empty cities of art , a lot of proximity tourism. Will it be just a parenthesis due to the pandemic or an opportunity to rethink the way of doing tourism in Italy?
«What has happened since February of this year in our country and in a large part of the globe has been compared to a third world war due to its effects on mortality, the economy, education, in individual and collective situations. The summer season (which has its symbolic epicenter in August), which has not been immune to significant material and immaterial upheavals in recent decades, has traditionally had its distinctive elements in holidays and travel. Up to now it has generally been experienced as a relaxing break in personal and group life waiting for the return to normality. This year is considered as a watershed between a before and after the pandemic, aware that its return cannot be excluded, in different and more controllable forms. The worrying trends forecast for the GDP, employment, the progression of social inequalities are enough to affirm that there is a need for a restart, if we want to listen to the optimists, or for a real regeneration of our economic, cultural and social, if we want to side with the pragmatists and innovators. We don't want to repeat the numerous and different forecasts (shared by a worrying pessimism), also because in a month's time we will know how things really went, better discovering the territorial asymmetry that characterizes our tourist offer. Instead, it seems right to us to recall how much shared by all the operators, institutions, observers and associations operating in the sector was the consideration of proximity tourism as the easiest and most motivated anchorage to refer to in an attempt to curb a season predictably disastrous. A choice supported by significant elements. Tourism cannot be relocated and the context in which the tourist offer is expressed is the territories, in the plurality of their expressions (cultural heritage, food and wine, events, creative industry). The strong sense of belonging to a plural unity is the peculiar way in which Italy as a nation has historically been formed up to now. To return to the territories, there are areas in our country, such as the Apennines, substantially ignored in the tourist practice, also defined as "reservoirs of the peasant soul", distinctive for their devotional memories and community life, as well as qualified by relevant entrepreneurial initiatives. There is also, in addition to the growing attraction towards the green and the landscape, a recovery of the practice of vacationing, of projects to enhance the villages, together with ambitious designs aimed at overcoming the North-South, plain-mountain, beach-area dichotomies internal, as well as to make the paths, the glorious and historic communication routes and the rivers into real tourist products. The fact that truly competitive alternatives exist in a country unanimously among the most attractive in the world does not mean or think that a new potential offer can represent an alternative to the traditional one (art cities will pay a high cost, lake tourism will increase , the mountain will be more competitive) nor believe that we will do it alone.
For years, above all for the cities of art – from Venice to Florence and Rome – the limits of mass tourism and hit-and-run tourism have been highlighted and the launch of a more sober and higher quality tourism has been invoked: it can be the occasion to begin?
«To deny that the history of Italian tourism is linked to cultural heritage, which continues to form its backbone, is a useless provocation. On the other hand, noting that the reasons for tourist mobility are extending to cultural heritage – understood as a universe in which, alongside cultural heritage, food and wine, the creative industry, festivals and traditional celebrations find space – is a fact that if anything, it accentuates the possibility that some historic cities will have to measure themselves against theovertourism, which is also at the origin of initiatives by some well-known European cities, which have allied themselves to counteract this trend. However, the fact that in Civitavecchia a ship unloads a mass of cruise passengers who reach the Colosseum by bus to photograph it and for a "hit and run" cannot be defined as a tourist practice, waiting to move to the Appia to taste the traditional cuisine and to then return to the ship, ready to leave again for the established journey. say that theovertourism it cannot be countered in a country that has emerged from the pandemic it is simply an insult to reason. It should probably be noted that in some cases these are only virtual battles. Certainly it is a problem not easily solved in the short term. The specifics cannot be ignored, but tackling the problem only with new governing rules for the different realities is reductive. As is happening in many cases, while enhancing cultural heritage as their central business, the interest of cities of art will have to expand to other assets (in line with what is happening in the demand for mobility) which pertain to the larger universe of cultural heritage that qualifies the territories in which the various communities operate. Reasoning in terms of destinations, with a plurality of offers, within which cities of art assume a highly qualifying value for their attractiveness, has become an increasingly widespread practice in the world of travel and holidays. The binomial city of art-territories assumes the value of a winning must for a country like Italy, considered at the same time a widespread museum and a set of territories of unparalleled distinctiveness for all those assets that are at the origin of mobility. It is a perspective (partly already existing) to be considered in terms of overall sustainability, in agreement between tour operators and local administrators, through a planning of flows, but more than anything else with a sharing of goals, not impossible to be practiced culturally, socially and economically.
Does the Italian Touring Club have any ideas on the matter and any suggestions for managing the transition from a hit and run tourism to a sustainable and quality tourism that is able to better enhance the Italian environment and beauties?
«Our private and non-profit association belongs to the non-profit universe. It has built its history on three assets: being a producer of knowledge (guides, maps, publications); to be a civil servant of travelers and institutions; be a moral reference point for tourism. This is his story. The combination of these three assets has motivated our choice, made explicitly over the last ten years, not to limit ourselves to being a tourism player, but to establish ourselves as a protagonist of the Italian system to ensure that our country, through the tourism, may it be increasingly known, attractive, competitive and welcoming. This function has been enriched in the last two years by a specific mission: to take care of Italy as a common good, focusing on the history and beauty of our country with strongly identifying traits of the same to be considered as founding elements through which we want to be perceived in the world . The enhancement of our country (we continue to talk about history and beauty) is the constant quality of all our activities and is at the origin of all our projects. Directly attributable to its history and its beauty is the design of territorial articulation that we are giving ourselves as an Association, convinced (many believe it) that starting from the territories (defined in their function as supplements of the tourist offer) and not from administrative boundaries that delimit them, a highly competitive territorial model of tourism governance can be affirmed».
On some occasions you have spoken of the ethics of tourism: what exactly do you mean and what does it mean for our country?
«The happy and absolutely forward-looking intuition of our founders was that tourism could make people better. When we travel, our minds open. We learn through other people, cultures, ideas and places. Travel can offer a new perspective that challenges individuals to think differently and to change not only attitudes but also behaviours. Tourism can bring not only economic benefits, but also intellectual, social and even more symbolic capital to the residents of each destination. The images and chronicles of overcrowding and lack of equity, what the insiders call overtourism and exploitation, amplified by the media, have helped to promote a reflection on our problems related to the sustainability of traveler flows and the impacts on the places visited and their inhabitants. In tourism, ethics is now a central issue for its future development, given that 1,4 billion individuals move from one side to the other on the planet. It is a common feeling which, albeit in a different way and with different degrees of perception, is by now widespread both among operators and in public opinion, especially the younger one, which increasingly expresses its willingness to be involved as a major player in the processes of change. The calls increasingly aimed at sustainable and increasingly responsible tourism, in the belief that both supply (through the redefinition of the production process) and demand (which should become more aware of the impacts deriving from tourist behaviour) must act because undertake a new practice in the way of traveling and taking holidays. It is not that, in this regard, shared international documents are lacking (Lanzarote Charter for Sustainable Tourism, World Code of Tourism Ethics, Agenda 2030). However, there has never been a real desire to put them into practice».
Do you not believe that, without forgetting the particular nature of the sector, Italian tourism would need - as happens in other European countries - but also a real industrial policy for tourism that knows how to combine art, environment, culture but also entrepreneurial management of resources with the Do you pay particular attention to transport, hotels and restaurants?
«Let's not forget that tourism is by definition transversal, that is, it is made up primarily of accommodation, transport and intermediation and has significant repercussions on cultural services and trade in general. For 100 euros spent by Italian or foreign tourists in our country, over a third goes to the hospitality sector, 13 euros to the restaurant sector, 12 to commerce (understood as shopping), 7 to air transport within our country, about 6 to that of other means of transport (railway, sea, road), 4 to that of intermediation (travel agencies and tour operators), 3 to cultural, sporting and recreational services; Finally, 20 euros go to other services not included among the main and most significant ones (insurance, expenses for generic items or personal services). This is an official photograph from last year, but it should be remembered that what is not detected does not count and that today it is very important, especially in the hospitality sector, thanks to the diffusion of digital platforms that add to the historical data of summer rentals.
Studies carried out in recent decades had defined a multiplier of 3 at the Italian level to arrive at quantifying, starting from the official ones to get to the real ones, these data, obviously not strictly indicative of the economic, social and cultural value of the sector in our country are sufficient for the role and weight of tourism on our future and allow us to take note of why tourism is in fact the result of a virtuous relationship between the various components of the essential and non-essential activities that characterize it: transport, education, training, economics, research, health, national and international relations. And it is for this reason that the fruit of a planning that arises from a shared and open vision is its first necessity, alongside the significant one of "rectifying" the enormous damage caused by the pandemic. Even for tourism that can count on a sustainability project it is the result of years of work, there are the cognitive prerequisites (everything that has been produced on the subject even just in recent months is of great importance). On the other hand, the conditions do not change (or, if they exist, they are karstic) for operating according to a shared vision (which does not exclude the need to re-qualify the current governance model of tourism itself) for a sector, such as tourism, in the which, at least in the conception of Touring, the economic and cultural purposes are contaminated until they become parallel convergences».
You are a man of communication and TV where, in fact, broadcasts - including quality ones - on Italian beauties and tourism are on the rise, but don't you think that to enhance our tourism we need to play the digitization card more?
«We cannot ignore the growing attention not only of TV but also of all communication towards tourism and in general on the themes of travel, the landscape, the environment, the territories, and it is undeniable that the media, in this case both the more traditional than the more innovative ones, have played a decisive role in making the culture of tourism grow. From an operational point of view, the tourist practice (documenting, choosing, booking, commenting) cannot do without the new information and consumption technologies. It is a challenge that our Association has also faced and which today qualifies as creative, technological, green and territorial. Technology has made it possible to face the pandemic in a less traumatic way, as seen in new relationship practices, training, education and work. Hence its growing weight in our daily lives, to the point of being invasive».
Does the Italian Touring Club have any special initiatives in store for mid-August and for the summer?
«In the face of the difficult moment that the country is going through, we have decided to launch a campaign to promote the Italian territory and its beauties. A double invitation to "travel from home" to then discover and rediscover as of this summer what our country has to offer, aware that in this situation the destination Italy will be chosen above all by Italians. With the hashtag #passioneItalia we go in search of places, landscapes and itineraries: from cities of art to the coasts, from mountains to villages, which never more than now need to go beyond the news story. The keys to the narrative are the Green Touring Guides, the insights prepared by our journalists, the cartographies of the historical archive and many other contents of the Tci's great travel baggage, all elements inspired by sustainable tourism not only in terms of the environment but also in terms of socioeconomic. The project aims to give the country's tomorrow back to our citizens, sure that this task now belongs to the community and to those who have been involved in taking care of Italy as a common good for 125 years. A piece of advice for mid-August and the surrounding area: take a bicycle and a good camera, take possession of the territories you practice as if you had to make them known in their connotative and civil extremes through #passioneItalia of the Italian Touring Club».
