What changes has the digital revolution brought to the tourism sector? Which risks and opportunities should be evaluated and integrated into public policy? These were some of the themes tackled at the conference Dal Locale al Globale: innovations, tendenze e strategie nel turismo (From the local to the global: innovations, trends and strategies for tourism) whose participants included Bernabò Bocca (President, Federalberghi), Stefano Fiori (Unindustria), Armando Peres (President, Comitato Turismo - OCSE) and Pietro Antonio Valentino (Vice President, Economia della Cultura).
The tourism sector is particularly significant to the global economy, considering that World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) estimates that 1.2 billion travellers move across the globe today, a number that is due to increase to 2 billion by 2030 and rise annually by 4%. The need to identify new dynamics, along with the inherent difficulties, in tourism in order to transform them speedily into good practices and efficient solutions is particularly relevant to Italy, which ranked 5th in worldwide destinations in 2017, generating approximately 186 billion euro, 11.1% of Italy’s GDP and 2.8 million jobs, according to the report L’arte di produrre Arte. Competitività e innovazione nella Cultura e nel Turismo published by Associazione Civita.
Overall, the tourism industry must face up to new challenges: from increasing competition to the introduction of different strategies to encourage and attract diversified niche markets to individual territories and the most recent need to regulate the new online booking services. Important transformations have also been identified in cultural tourism which, thanks to technology and the sharing economy, is defining new tourist experiences and offers, for example, creative tourism. Creative tourists are attracted by shared cultural activities but also by the specific idiosyncrasies of a region (fashion, design, artisanal products, food and wine) while the evocative natures of the settings for films and TV series has generated the well-known shift towards cinetourism.