Italian tourism, sustainable and green
According to UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organization), sustainable tourism can be defined as that sort of tourism that “satisfies the need of both travellers and guest areas at the same time protecting and improving the opportunities for the future”.
That is actually the goal of sustainable tourism – inducing visitors to explore and move economy so as to support the small rural communities. With sustainable tourism in Italy, the value of local events, of typical products, of local culture and traditions grow – so much as to attract tourism even far from high season periods.
More and more often, tourist operators promote activities focused on contact with nature: trekking, walks and bike ridings are just a few examples of a general trend that gives value to natural environment by making people see how much it can offer.
Due to Covid-19, this year choosing Italy as holiday destination is so very important, in order to help its recovery. From the analysis made by World Capital on national and international tourism in Italy, we can trace a possible scenery for a restart. “If all the people that in 2019 moved towards other countries should remain in Italy for 2020 – the report says- they could make for all the foreign tourists registered in Italy during 2019”
But once “formal lockdown ended” Raffaele Rio, President of Demoskopika, declared “we shall have to cope with psychological lockdown, with people afraid to move. In this situation, each region should start to rethink its touristic offer, in total security”.
The conclusion of Raffaele Rio is the “a series of actions should be set in motion not only for traditional products but also for “farm-to-table” tourism, less popular destinations, the mountains, the parks, the many marvellous small towns of our territories”. A strategy then, which like a stone thrown in a pond, could generate concentric circles, each of them representing the different groups of autochthonous tourists that must be persuaded and motivated into choosing the right destination. Holiday at home, the proximity tourism – that is the key.
This kind of tourism improves our lifestyle and our health and helps us to reduce pollution in our cities, to discover (and protect) our land and so to be more responsible travellers. From this point of view, Italy is a place that bestows great satisfaction on more or less expert trekkers. In fact, in all our regions there are a lot of trekking trails, with different difficulty levels, which can reveal hidden landscapes, gorgeous sites and the richness of our parks and natural reserves.
First of all the “Italia Cai Trail” a way of more than seven thousand kilometres that connects all Italian regions through the Appennini ridge and Alpin arc from Santa Teresa di Gallura, in the north of Sardinia, to Muggia near Trieste. The Grand Tour of Garda is a ring that begins and ends at Riva del Garda, moving through beautiful landscapes among Lombardia, Veneto and Trentino Alto Adige. The Salt trail: from Piemonte to Liguria, from Alps to the sea, going through former military roads for almost 30 km. The Walk of Saint Antony is made of twenty-one stages for three different ways (for total 388 kilometers) that connects Padua to La Verna. The Journey into Abruzzo’s history, a single trail of 330 km, which can be divided into five different tracks. The Via Romea Nonantolana - from Nonantola, in Modena province, starts a track along the medieval roads that once brought to Rome. The Cammino di Assisi - 285 km from Dovadola, near Forlì, to Assisi. The Sentiero del Dürer - into the woodlands and valleys of Bolzano, 39 kilometres of trails that can be divided in eight parts. The Cammino di Dante, a ring trail in twenty stages, starting and ending in Ravenna. The Cammino Celeste – Iter Aquileiense, from Aquileia to Monte Lussari, a historical and cultural route of ten stages, 210 km long. The Sentiero della Pace, 604 km along the historical sites of Great World War.
These are just a few examples of the vast national offer – thanks to nature and sustainability, it can make both us and our country breathe again.
