In times of crisis we should
try to promote those sectors that can represent a shot in the arm of a
country’s economy.
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In Italy, a country in which tourism
is very important, due to a cultural and artistic heritage which is unique in
the world, to wonderful landscapes and to famous fine food and wine, the
watchword now is “deseasonalizing”,
i.e. attracting tourists and visitors throughout the year. Fighting the crisis
means re-launch those sectors, like tourism, which are a strength for Italy,
but which have gone through a bad period in 2008 and 2009, and we can do that
through projects which are meant to widen the offer and attract different
categories of tourists.
One
of the sectors that Italy
is now investing in is conference tourism, to attract visitors who are very
appreciated by hoteliers and tourism operators. This category of tourists,
indeed, is mostly composed of professionals who can spend money, thus making
all those who work in that area happy. Moreover, conference tourism is a very
useful means to deaseasonalize tourism in Italy, and to promote those areas
that in some periods of the year would not be very busy. An example is given by
Romagna Riviera, full of tourists in summer,
not so much in the other seasons: the Rimini
fairground, young but already competitive, attracts in that area another type
of tourism, which is not less important than beach tourism. Furthermore many
hotels of the Riviera
cities, like Riccione, work throughout the year hosting conferences,
conventions and corporate meetings. Many hotels in this and other tourist
cities are equipped with meeting rooms and provide all those services
(hostesses, translators and interpreters) and tools (microphone, overhead
projectors…) which are necessary to host an event. Promoting conference tourism
in these and other zones that have a tradition in tourism means having many advantages,
and the advantage is given by the hospitality that characterises many Italian
cities and that makes them suitable for conference tourism, too. To sum up,
with the development of conference tourism cities like Riccione, with many
hotels which can host a big number of visitors and high quality services, can
use their resources in all the seasons, contributing to the development of the
area in which they rise.
However,
hotels with meeting rooms are not enough: to promote conference tourism in a
proper way, to take to Italy
great numbers, as happens in many European cities, and to host international
events, ad hoc congress areas need to be built. Many Italian cities are working
to this: a project has just been presented, for example, to build a congress
area between Massa Carrara and Viareggio, in Tuscany, to strengthen the tourist
offer of that zone and to fill an Italian gap, i.e. the lack of a conference
centre that can host a great deal of participants. Big Italian cities, too, are
investing in conference tourism: Turin, for example, is striving for a new
conference centre, while Rome aims at differentiating and widening its rich
offer investing also in this type of tourism, and in Milan, which is probably
the Italian city where conference tourism is most developed, the new conference
centre for the Milan Expo is already being built.
