New Deal Europe Weekly Update on Tourism to the Balkan Region, Week 19
News from the markets: Italy
This week we look at the largest market for the Balkans — Italy, with our guest, Gorazd Skrt, owner of Lovely Trips and a specialist on the Italian market. Gorazd has been working with this market for over 25 years, 10 of them as Director of the Slovenian Tourism Board in Milan. He is exceptionally well placed to discuss the outbound market in Italy, as his extensive database covers everything from tour operators and travel organisers to PR and press organisations. He represents many Balkan tourist boards and suppliers, and takes part in over 15 fairs a year in both Italy and beyond, so his views on Italian tourism to the Balkan region carry great weight.
NDE: Good to talk with you today, Gorazd and thanks for agreeing to be our industry voice this week to tell us more about the Italian tourism market. Firstly can you explain what is your agency, Lovely Trips, and what it focuses on?
GS: Lovely Trips helps our partners — mostly regions from Slovenia and the Balkan peninsula — to tell their story on the Italian market. They have excellent products and ideas and our role is to communicate them to the Italian public and specialized audiences. While we communicate with these segments via Blogs and Newsletters, we also like to bring influencers to our regions, to present products ‘live’. We are very happy that Slovenia — and a big part of the Balkans is easily reached from Trieste, an Italian city on the border, where we usually gather participants for these kinds of tours.
NDE: Can you explain to us what are the significant motivants for Italian tourists?
GS: Italian tourists have changed a lot in the last 25 years. Once you could say that they were happy with good food, decent rooms and a nice beach. Nowadays, they still demand good food and a nice room, but they want to be involved in local life too. Previously they came to a destination to spend their time on resting, today this is not the case. They ask for much more active holidays. Slovenia and the Balkans offer them many opportunities from this point of view.
NDE: We know that Italy is the biggest market for many of the Balkan countries including your home country of Slovenia. What, in your opinion, is their perception of the Balkan region as a destination, and why are some destinations more popular than others?
GS: The view changed since the 90s, when new countries were born and the perception of Yugoslavia started to weaken. New generations have a completely new perspective. Different segments find, in the Balkans, rather diverse appeals. Let’s say that good food is still the unifying factor.
In the past Italian, and other foreign tourists, mostly used main tourist trails: they visited Bled, Postojna Caves, Portorož — and continued to Zagreb, Plitvice Lakes, and to the Croatian coast. Today many of the ‘new’ Italian tourists find their own points of interest, especially in nature, and even off the beaten track, far from most well known attractions.
NDE: Let’s look at the current crisis and its impact. In the first wave of coronavirus Italy was one of the most affected countries in Europe, if not the world. What was the main reason for the high number of cases in the first wave and do you think it is being handled differently now?
GS: Italy had quite a lot of bad luck at the beginning of last year. The Mediterranean way of life, full of close contacts in the community, offered, it seems, the perfect conditions for the fast spread of the disease. The northern part, especially the region of Lombardy, suffered most. They struggled as few other countries in the World did to contain the virus. It looks they learned quite a lot from their experience, and at least at the beginning of the second wave they had quite excellent results compared to other European countries. Today the situation is not so good, but nevertheless not so critical as during the first wave.
The situation in the Balkans, is the complete opposite, particularly in Slovenia, where we had practically no difficulties during the initial outbreak, but have a very difficult situation today.
NDE: Looking at the travel industry in particular, how is the pandemic affecting the industry in Italy and what is the Italian government policy with regards to supporting tourism businesses through the crisis?
GS: Italian tourism is on its knees. Some destinations, such as Venice, lost 50 per cent of their visitors. Some others in the south, Rome, Naples, Palermo, that rely exclusively on foreign tourists arriving by plane, were nearly completely empty! Restaurants, bars, hotels and practically all tourism activities struggled to survive during the first wave. The second wave means death for much of them.
Italy will be one of the leading tourist destinations again — but we will see a lot of new faces in the tourism industry then, since many of today’s players will not survive.
The Italian government has decided not to go in lockdown during this second phase and has left the borders open, but it doesn’t help, since there are practically no tourists coming to the country. The restaurants can remain open until 6 pm, but the problem remains that there are no guests. The Italian state helps the owners of activities, paying them basic contributions, but with all the costs they have, many of them will have to close their activities. The situation looks quite tragic today. Of course, after the crisis the tourism will restart, no doubts. I’m sure Italy will be one of the leading tourist destinations again — but we will see a lot of new faces in the tourism industry then, since many of today’s players will not survive.
NDE: In that case, do you think post Covid travel from Italy will be any different to how people travelled before? Is there any new trend you see emerging for the future of travel and if so who will benefit and who will lose?
GS: I’m quite sure about that! It seems that mass tourism, that was debated even before the Covid crisis, will lose its appeal and its strength. I believe people will search for more individual solutions on how to spend their vacations. It will be also much more difficult, at least for some period, to travel to long haul destinations by plane ridiculously cheaply. So I’m sure people will discover destinations close to their homes. Well, there is nothing wrong with that!
NDE: What can our partners in the Balkans offer to the Italian market in the future? What will attract Italians to visit the area again?
GS: Slovenia and, the Balkans more so, are unexplored destinations. They offer the traveller the opportunity to discover themselves! They can do that in exploring nature, experiencing folklore and tradition, or eating good local food. There are not many destinations in the world that provide so much authenticity!
NDE: And finally, what are you plans for the future? What can Lovely Trips offer to our readers?
GS: I love what I’m doing. I adore explaining to travel organisers, journalists, bloggers, travellers, all the possibilities that our destinations offer and can propose to them. So, I guess, you will still find me telling their stories on the tourism fairs, in my blogs and newsletters….or in one of many other ways.
Questions by Tine Murn and Robert Dee, founders of New Deal Europe, the only travel market platform dedicated to generating business to the Greater Balkan region of Europe. www.newdealeurope.com
