Adnkronos Rome, Feb. 9 (Adnkronos/Labitalia) – Is the curious tourist a happier person? What does it mean to do tourism today? Is the time of the cultural tourist a more emotional time? And what does culture mean today? Why are we increasingly looking for new experiences and emotions? Is the tourist who discovers and learns something new a more satisfied tourist? Does discovering the territory also mean discovering a part of ourselves? Do our senses work better in Nature? These are some of the questions that Elena Croci, an expert in communication and cultural marketing, tries to answer with her essay 'New cultural tourism'.
We start from the statement that the globalization of many parts of the world is creating new standards that allow access everywhere; a credit card and a minimal knowledge of English open today, almost everywhere, a gateway to the tourist. A door where emotional marketing represents innovation compared to traditional marketing, with the search for experiential benefits and content. A careful analysis, with open sociological questions, because it is certainly not easy to talk today about tourism, about a new search for the identity of the human being, about Nature, Culture and Territory as perfect intermediaries of this investigation.
"The post-pandemic period - the author comments - has made clear the desire to live unique experiences, not necessarily far from home. Culture, today, is increasingly pop and creating connections between the places visited and the tourist becomes the priority: publishing images on various social networks is a way to assert oneself and promote the territory which, by providing the set for the shots that will then be put online, obtains zero-cost advertising. A real challenge, of course, but also a victory for everyone".
But not only that: after a careful identikit of the new tourist, of the time factor and of what really makes the difference, the author tries to define in this 'manual for insiders and non-insiders', what are the new rules for those who offer tourism. "Global conflicts and post-pandemic life - she adds - force us to rethink our concept of doing tourism and culture and it is on these elements that the offer must be shaped. How? By creating competitive networks aided by technology and social media, training future tourism managers by using the Italian potential of hospitality thanks also to Made in Italy, applying new strategic models that can dialogue with the public and private sectors. Deseasonalization versus overtourism".
Today's new tourist, increasingly demanding and aware, is no longer satisfied with just seeing and photographing, he needs opportunities that allow him to live original experiences that can then be shared and amplified thanks to social media. Today's traveler is willing to pay to stand out from the crowd and experience that emotional uniqueness capable of surprising and lasting over time because, he says, "the experiences where all our five senses are amplified, become temporally indelible moments".
Through the many researches carried out in the last decades (also proposing a rich bibliography), Elena Croci offers a look at the social and anthropological meaning of making culture today, observing the new trends and trying to give a name to gestures and habits to a word that extends to many areas.
In this essay, which represents a new edition compared to the one written in 2009, the author wanted to think about an innovative tourism in an era in which everything – from food to sport to look – becomes a cultural experience.
To provide the reader with a look as close as possible to the present time, the author involves large and small industrial and entrepreneurial realities, asking each one their personal point of view on the word tourism or better, on how much this topic impacts their business. For example, Autogrill Italia tells the story of Mario Pavesi's entrepreneurial career; Bmw Italia talks about the concept of travel and what a certain type of car still represents today for those who want to do tourism, Bam, the Library of Trees in Milan, presents itself as a physical, social and cultural connector; Garipalli talks about their innovative idea of cultural City Escape and much more.
There are many key words in this volume that try to define the profile, the shape of the new tourist and what he asks for in an increasingly complex world: emotion, identity, uniqueness, experience, knowledge, culture, nature, lifestyle, uniqueness, consensus, exchange, sharing, territory, relationship, mobility, souvenir, deseasonalization, no overtourism, change, new models.