Rimini, October 15 (askanews) – Travel is changing pace, and Rimini Fiera is taking notice. In the TTG Travel Experience and InOut pavilions, Italian Exhibition Group focuses on a single word, Exist: travel as a time to be experienced, even before being a destination. "It's the event where the trends that are beginning to shape tourism are somehow intercepted," explains Italian Exhibition Group CEO Corrado Perabono.
One of these is slowing down: we spent years collecting selfie spots, now we're starting to see the need to slow down, and so the key is to inhabit a place rather than visit it." And those who slow down seek out less-traveled spots. In the villages, in the first half of the year, arrivals grew by 5,3 percent and overnight stays by 4,6 percent, as Tourism Minister Gianmarco Mazzi noted at the inauguration, citing over €700 million invested in mountains, villages, and trails. "The real challenge," Peraboni continued, "is to prevent all tourists from being in the same place at the same time and therefore try to promote—and this is one of the challenges of this event—even the lesser-known and less-visited places, so as to achieve a more even distribution across the country."
Those who travel are changing, and those who sell travel are also changing: operators from 75 countries come to the fair. “This is an edition,” the CEO recalls, “where for the first time we have many new countries that have never come before, from the Philippines to Colombia, to Kyrgyzstan, so a more international fair with more operators and I believe that is the direction.
It's no longer just a fair where Italy sells itself to the world and the world comes to sell itself to Italians, but a foreign-to-foreign fair, where, for example, a Canadian operator comes to buy Greek products and vice versa." The fair also focuses on travel routes, where the one dedicated to Saint John Paul II, between Italy and Poland, is presented. Meanwhile, on stage, the focus is on those who work in hotels: young people and businesses compared, and the experience of Albergo Etico, which provides jobs for people with disabilities. And if travel becomes living, hospitality also changes: at InOut, natural pools, glamping, and rooms designed for those who stay, not for those who pass through.
Askanews