Rusting Italian Tourism
Fewer and fewer people are choosing Italy as a vacation destination according to a recent article in a Sunday edition of Italian daily Corriere Della Sera.
Back in the 70s, Italy was the destination of choice for many of the world’s tourists. No longer though, Italy has now slipped to fifth place behind China, the USA, Spain and France as the preferred destination of many holidaymakers.
Things will become distinctly worse for Italy if it does not slap on some make-up and polish up its act.
Rusting Italy
The article states that Italy will most probably slip to ninth place by 2018.
Rather embarrassingly for Italy, it is predicted to fall behind my homeland of the United Kingdom as a holiday destination.
This in my book is crazy. No disrespect to the UK, but how could people prefer the unpredictable weather of the UK to the stable, steady and reliable Italian summer climate? Not to mention Italian food, monuments right, left and centre, warm seas, and breathtaking panoramas.
The Same Old Story
Unsurprisingly for Italy, it appears as though poor management is to blame. And Italy’s almost staunch refusal to invest in its future is not helping matters much either.
Investment in Italy‘s tourist sector in 2008 stood at an almost measly $38.9 billion dollars. Why almost measly? Well, Spain, for example, one of Italy’s arch rivals on the tourism front, invested no less than $70 billion dollars in its tourism industry last year.
Even worse, Italy ranks at a lowly 28th place in terms of how competitive the country is as a tourist destination, which means places like Denmark and Portugal leave Italy in their wake.
Denmark Beats Italy
Nothing to do with the results of some recent football match. Nope, sorry my dear Danes, but your country’s tourism portal web site is worth shouting about.
Just take a look at the slick VisitDenmark.com site with its saucy bare bottomed girls (be patient – there is a slide show!) showing off their delightful derrières, accompanied by the catchy ‘Free the Dane in You’ slogan, and then click on over to ItalianTourism.com, and you will see the difference immediately. A word starting with ‘s’ and ending with ‘e’ springs to mind with regard to the Italian effort.
The landing page of VisitDenmark.com boasts a choice of something like 20 odd languages. ItalianTourism.com, which is what you will come across doing a Google search for ‘Italy’ on Google.com and Google.co.uk only has one. At least it does not need a landing page!
As for an Italy dot it. Forget it, as mentioned elsewhere on this blog, the project was killed off by Italian bureaucracy ages ago.
Come on Italy! You can do better than that.
My Left Foot
The trouble is the person in charge of the Italian tourist board is probably about as technologically aware as my left foot, and is most probably just about as old as the Colosseum.
If Italy does not pull up its socks, it will be lucky if it only slips to ninth place as a world tourist destination by 2018. A great shame as Italy has so much to offer travelers.
Should you want some real information on Italy, only in English, alas, then enter ‘blog italy’ on Google.com, Google.uk, Google.com.au, Google.co.jp, and Google.it, and you will find some. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink!
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Rusty Fiat from Stuart Axe on Flickr.
Italy is beautifull not like UK. You’ve got a lot yo offer
My site about good weather http://naszesydney.blogspot.com/
This is certainly discouraging news for all who love Italy.
The corruption and waste and mismanagement and acceptance of chaos and sham governments filled with sham politicians can be hard to take…trust me…I am a citizen of the United States, I know. But isn’t more than romantic drivel to say that those who love and care deeply about Italia also have some type of fatal attraction to the lack of real order, to the chaos, to the ‘show’? I also wonder, in fairness, if the standard of living in these other nations isn’t higher than in Italy, and if those countries have more money to spend on promoting tourism.
I’m not at all disagreeing with the notion that the Italian government is corrupt and that its inability to set priorities and act effectively to improve the lives of its people–and to protect its countless priceless historic and artistic treasures–is shameful…it is. But I’m not convinced that my own nation, if entrusted with protecting AND promoting such an enormous number of sites and treasures would rise to the challenge. And wouldn’t more tourism actually jeopardize further the preservation of key sites? Just some thoughts.
We own a number of travel websites and have recently also launched http://www.chooseitaly.com . The feeling i get is that even though the italian trade want to get things done, eveything takes place at a slow pace. Like other countries we can easily blame the governement for everything. The private sector and their attitude, speed of response and reaction also plays an important part!
Hi John,
Interesting to hear this, though not a great surprise. Italy does seem to move very much at its own pace. Still, if both public and private sector move too slowly, they will be left behind by other more proactive countries.
Still, I’m not expecting any radical changes here!
Thanks for popping in, and I’ll hop on over to your new site.
Best,
Alex
Hi Gio,
Thanks for commenting. It is sad news for Italy – and you are right that Italians seem to dislike order, although they do seem to want it as they complain incessantly about the lack of it! Italy is not at all united, and still seems to be a series of little principalities. The only Italians who feel Italian are those Italians who no longer live in Italy! To an extent, the disorder seems to be promoted by Italian governments because organisation would mean accountability, and accountability would mean that spiriting away large sums of money would become difficult. And no one does anything in Italy if he or she thinks there will be no money in it.
As for Italy not having the cash to invest in tourism, this is the impression Italy wants to give, but Italians all seem to be remarkably well heeled to me. Cars, mobile phones, nice clothes, exotic holidays, two or three houses – heck I don’t think there is any real shortage of money here. And there are some damn good Italians who really care about Italy – but just why Italy seems to remain a mess is not all that clear. Too many interests, I suppose.
Italians, and I’ve said this before, do not realise just what a jewel they possess, and with better management, the country could become the world’s number one tourist destination – and solve its economic problems too. Yes, tourism would cause problems for certain sites, but with a little thought and planning, money raised from tourism could be used to overcome any potential problems which might arise.
Really Italy should outsource the management of the country to the Germans or the Austrians!
Thanks for dropping in,
Alex