Garavaglia: “Sustainability among the tourism guidelines, adjust the offer”

“Sustainability is one of the guidelines of the new tourism” and in this perspective “comes the modification of the tourist and the attitude of the tourist, so we have to adapt the tourist offer to a tourist who has already changed, had begun to change well before Covid, but the pandemic crisis meant that this change was understood by everyone “. This was stated by Massimo Garavaglia, Minister of Tourism at the opening of the ‘Pollica Digital Week’, the event organized by the Municipality of Pollica and the Future Food Institute, scheduled until March 31 at the Castello dei Principi Capano. Therefore, a tourist who has changed, and who, explains the minister, “wants different experiences, wants the outdoors, wants to experience communities and not take selfies at the Colosseum and leave. So we have to adjust the offer”. There are two examples of action that the ministry is carrying out, together with the Regions. One, explains Garavaglia, “concerns the open air and the development of campers, one of the great possibilities we have in our country. In Italy we have about 2 thousand pitches of not exactly excellent quality. The benchmark is France, it has 4 thousand and good if not excellent quality. Result: tourists from Northern Europe prefer France and Spain to Italy. open air of a changing tourism. It is absolutely not true that it is a poor market, just look at how much a camper costs “. Second action: “with the co-financing of the regions, the development of the network of historic trains. We already have excellent examples made with these historic trains, sold out every event. The goal is to make them not spot but structural events. It is an example of tourism that comes out of the usual big attractions, when the problem of overtourism returns we find ourselves with the need to distribute the tourist flows. The historic train goes in this direction. Distribution of tourist flows outside the normal attractions, integration with other forms of sustainable tourism and, therefore, food and wine, wine tourism, and finally integration with cycling tourism and also walking routes “concludes the minister.