The challenge: returning to accessible, sustainable and regenerative tourism
As the country with the highest number of sites included on the World Heritage List, Italy, with its immense cultural, historical, landscape and natural wealth, has long relied on tourism as one of the undisputed pillars of its national system.
A sector that contributes almost 7% to national GDP and, with around 437 million tourist presences, generates almost 14% of total added value and employment when the direct and indirect effects of tourism are taken into account.
At least, this was the situation until 2019.
The forced closures and restrictions introduced during the pandemic dealt a severe blow to a sector built around mobility and cultural exchange. ISTAT data estimate a 38.4% decline in tourists staying in accommodation facilities compared with 2019 levels.
It is time to make tourism accessible again.
In this sense, environmental, political, social and economic security are fundamental both for tourists and for local communities. These must be combined with food safety, the safety and quality of local accommodation, and the protection of socio-cultural heritage from environmental threats and excessive mass tourism.
Technology also represents a current and very real challenge: by making tourism an active protagonist in the digital transition, it is possible to scale new opportunities for communication and dissemination of local initiatives and cultural, natural and artistic heritage.
Among tourism’s current challenges is also the need to turn it into an instrument of sustainability.
Sustainable does not mean inaccessible or low-quality. Revaluing slow and local tourism, focused on discovering traditions, flavours and the beauty of a territory, means recognising that quantity and speed are not synonymous with quality.
This requires strengthening national economic competitiveness.
Finally, tourism today urgently needs regeneration. Enhancing territories, regenerating villages and encouraging forms of slow tourism can and must become central pillars of new national policies.
These are the challenges tourism must address if it is to become accessible, sustainable and regenerative once again.
Quality, innovation, regeneration: the potential of slow tourism
As United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stated: “Tourism can be a platform for overcoming the pandemic. By bringing people together, tourism can promote peace, solidarity and trust.”
The forced halt experienced by the tourism sector during the pandemic highlighted the need to change our approach to tourism, embracing forms that are more sustainable and more respectful of the extraordinary natural, cultural and artistic heritage available to us.
While on one hand the pandemic led to a decline in tourist visits worldwide — especially in countries such as Italy that rely heavily on the sector — on the other hand it brought millions of people closer to forms of slow and proximity tourism.
We are talking about tourism capable of rediscovering human and universal values: care, listening, attention, respect and reciprocity.
Tourism that respects rather than distorts a territory and the people who live there. Tourism that brings us closer to the Earth in all its dimensions.
Tourism rooted in origins and territories, capable of strengthening and ensuring local economic development, while becoming a tool for direct knowledge and experience of local realities, traditions and food and wine excellence, and at the same time “making artistic and craft heritage accessible, allowing us to rediscover knowledge”, as Stefano Pisani, Mayor of Pollica and coordinator of the Italian network of Cittaslow cities, highlighted.
Tourism, through its dynamism and mobility, can become a leading sector for innovation, social policies and social regeneration, provided that the dominant approach pays attention to people, relationships and communities.
By promoting social justice through the welcoming of migrants and fostering genuine integration within local communities — especially the most marginal, forgotten or isolated ones, such as small villages — tourism takes on a strategic role in the political choices of Italy, the Mediterranean and Europe.
The European strategy toward smart, sustainable and responsible tourism
Shortly before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the European Commission published a European industrial strategy, a roadmap for the transition toward a sustainable society in line with the Green Deal.
The goal was to facilitate Europe’s green and digital transitions and make it more competitive and autonomous across 14 sectors, including tourism.
However, the pandemic led to a complete reassessment of the European and global industrial system, and consequently of the European tourism strategy itself.
To respond to the sector’s losses, in April 2022 the European Union updated its tourism guidelines by opening new channels for dialogue and collaboration with the various stakeholders involved: a crucial step in a sector as cross-cutting as tourism.
As the sector most severely affected by the pandemic, tourism became a priority area for reform within the updated strategy.
Ecological acceleration, digitalisation and stakeholder involvement in European Commission initiatives are the pillars on which the EU has chosen to build the European Agenda for Tourism 2030/50, developed jointly by the Commission and Member States.
The Commission’s preferred approach places cooperation between industry, public authorities, social actors and all other indirect stakeholders at the centre of the digital and ecological transition of tourism, in order to listen to needs, requirements and demands and propose and implement policies capable of responding to the expectations of workers and communities.
The sharing of ideas and values, a key point of the European strategy, will also be facilitated by the creation of an online platform that the Commission expects to launch by the end of 2022 and that will help connect the various stakeholders in the tourism sector.
In addition, in order to create a sustainable and resilient Europe, the EU has chosen to annually reward cities that stand out for smart tourism through the European Capital of Smart Tourism competition, now in its third edition.
The initiative aims to reward cities that represent models for tourism in the fields of digitalisation, sustainability, accessibility, creativity and respect for cultural heritage.
It is certainly an economic incentive for the recovery of the sector, but also a necessary recognition of experiences capable of combining quality, territorial and community enhancement, heritage preservation and slow tourism.
Like the European Capital of Smart Tourism, the NextGenerationEU policy also provides economic support for achieving 11 macro-objectives in tourism, including the development of green communities and the enhancement of agriculture and rural landscapes.
The European approach therefore aims toward tourism that is not only sustainable and digital, but also responsible, capable of understanding the needs of territories and citizens and responding appropriately.
For the European Commission, this objective can only be achieved through efficient use of local resources, including farms and local producers, but also stakeholders, young people, communities and local and regional policy makers.
Tourism not only to visit, but to regenerate the environment, communities and the economy
For development to be genuinely sustainable and achieve forms of collective prosperity, we need to remember that there is no economic improvement in a degraded environment; no effective tourism strategy in places where residents are unhappy and where there is no longer anything authentic to tell; no investment capable of working by itself without someone locally who is willing, capable and competent enough to make it meaningful and productive; and no demographic growth in a place lacking services or cultural stimulation.
Starting from the Mediterranean Diet, an undisputed example of a real and integrated balance between different complexities, Future Food began precisely there, from Pollica, a cultural and natural jewel in the heart of the Mediterranean but also a place affected by progressive depopulation and uncontrolled tourism, to prototype and co-create the first integrated and holistic development model.
Since 1961, Cilento has lost around 57,000 inhabitants.
Demographic decline triggers a dangerous circular pattern of marginality, which in turn weakens population structure, consumption and income-generation potential, local service systems, agricultural and productive practices due to labour shortages, and the cultural, environmental and social elements that form the foundation of the Mediterranean way of life.
Restoring a phenomenon of “restanza” — the choice to remain and build a future in one’s own territory — is certainly one of the key objectives of the Paideia Campus, together with the need to promote a new model of tourism: aware, attentive, slow, responsible and sustainable.
Indeed, the summer influx of Italian and international tourists completely disrupts the rhythms of the village and the nature of the territory, while winter is characterised by prolonged months of almost total abandonment.
It is enough to consider that in Campania, gross bed-place occupancy was 0.9% in April 2020, reaching a maximum of 43.9% in August 2020, and even 71.2% in August 2019.
Taking these premises into account, and in order to promote widespread regeneration of the territory with its communities at the centre, Pollica 2050 is the project through which the Future Food Institute, together with the local community, works to restore a responsible development model and encourage a virtuous encounter between territory and people, care and beauty.
How?
- Promoting new forms of tourism centred on biophilia, wellbeing and longevity.
- Directly involving and encouraging the local community to care for its beauty and common goods, telling its own story firsthand and becoming, in every respect, an educating community.
- Promoting training programs for the local population to strengthen skills and managerial abilities and improve the hospitality sector, while also nurturing a healthy “heritage pride” capable of becoming a driver for communicating and promoting one’s land of origin. This was at the heart of the “Trame Mediterranee” project, which begins in schools with innovative internship programs designed to train young explorers, storytellers and ambassadors of Mediterranean identity. These same objectives were also embodied in the Benessere Giovani program, a training pathway created for young people in Pollica to develop entrepreneurial ideas and a sense of agency, also through direct encounters with the guardians of the territory’s environmental, food and cultural biodiversity. All of these elements are essential for protecting and at the same time making accessible Italy’s heritage, archaeological sites and historic buildings, but above all for creating awareness.
- Disseminating tourism information, e-commerce solutions and interactive technology to explore the territory and literally immerse oneself in an experience filled with history, art, culture, science and taste.
- Facilitating forms of food and wine tourism and experiential tourism, based on moments of conviviality and placing supply chains and producers’ stories at the centre.
This is the kind of tourism that can become a valuable driver for these communities, capable of combining regeneration of the social fabric, support for the local economy and better conservation of natural heritage, especially because these areas provide privileged access to both natural and cultural landscapes.
Tourism is in fact deeply rooted in culture.
This complementarity is part of Future Food’s vision for the regeneration of land and territory, which can only be achieved through a combination of social, political and institutional tools capable of connecting different dimensions.
Future Food’s collaboration with The Fork Organization to rethink the Mediterranean Diet Museum in Pioppi is an example of this intersectionality.
Through a Boot Camp designed to strengthen the role of the Museum — a repository of stories and memories linked to the values and concept of the Mediterranean Diet — culture and tourism enter into dialogue as part of a regenerative action.
At the same time, it is crucial to ensure dialogue and coordination between local and national strategies.
For this reason, the commitment of the Future Food Institute has also extended into G20 meetings and the General States of Tourism, facilitating debates and discussions on new strategies and the sustainability of Italy’s tourism offer, while encouraging multi-level collaboration among institutional and local actors.
Cities, villages and the natural and cultural wealth they contain should no longer be conceived merely as places for welcoming tourists, “containers” for seasonal and temporary events, but as places where people can directly listen to stories, taste foods and traditions, learn knowledge and crafts, and experience — rather than simply visit — what these places have to offer culturally, naturally and humanly.
To embrace integral ecology, we must restore beauty and collective wellbeing.
This inevitably passes through responsible tourism.
Follow us on Twitter!
#RegenerAction2022 #EUAgrifoodWeek2022
