Italy's new strategy post pandemic

"We have to sell a new kind of tourism and slow tourism is a good
strategy," Nardella said. "We don't want daily tourists only for three
hours who take some photos and don't go into a museums or restaurants
... If you want to know Florence, you must stay in this city, living
the sensations and experiences.

It's good to see a thoughtful plan from a politician and I hope Mayor Nardella and other city leaders in the EU have the resolve to go through with the changes.

Love the idea of "slow tourism." Although we've done RS tours in the past, and will continue to as long as we are able, we've always added on up to a week before and after each tour to just savor a place.

It sounds good to people here, but cynicism says that good intentions only last until the next election. Mayors are more in tune with what the locals want, but state and national governments are less so. It would be great to hear from our Italian friends here on the forum as to whether they see sustainable changes coming from this.

I think RSE tours do a good job of not rushing the experience and encouraging participants to explore further and deeper on their own. But lets face it, most tourists just want to hit the highlights if its their first and probably only time somewhere.

Stan I guess I have a bit of cynic in me too. I think they better get moving on these reforms fast, because things could open up before they have a chance. I can't see them putting the genie back in the bottle if they wait.

I also wonder how you can really stop day trippers? I guess you can stop a tour bus, but not public transit. Shouldn't someone who's investing a week of holiday in Tuscany be allowed a day trip to Florence?

I believe Rick's 14 day Europe itinerary day trips to Florence from a country hotel. If the mayor succeeds, I guess Rick will need to adjust his itinerary a little bit.

I'd love it if it came to pass in some way and the city centres became full of local life again.

And the photo in the article of the space to view the Sistine Chapel?! Imagine that experience!

I also wonder how you can really stop day trippers?

That can be a difficult issue. In my small, but very visited, city, 100+ cruise ships came last year and maybe more were planning to come this year. It hadn't reached Venice-level problems, so there were no plans to cut back. However, Covid-19 stepped in. I don't know how many there will be this year (if any), but certainly far less than last year. Certainly people can still drive here, fly, or take bus or train. Those couldn't realistically be stopped or reduced, but cruises could. So cities that have ways of arrival that can be restricted can do something about day-trippers. But it's not easy.

I'm so old that I saw the Sistine Chapel with the same number of visitors inside, but without the virus outside. The Last Judgment's guys were still hanging around with no pants.

I can clearly remember a Neapolitan guide pointing at the Laocoon and saying "Nice, but it's just a Roman copy"

Andrea, it will probably be a slow summer, so the genie will stay in the bottle for a while. My sister-in-law in Europe told me today that she doesn’t know one person who is traveling even within the Schengen this year. She said everyone she knows is staying close to home. I’d like to hear what others who are living in France, Italy, Spain, Germany etc have to say.

Very interesting to hear from the mayor of Florence. I for one will be happy to take another "slow" vacation in Florence! Spent a week there a couple of years ago and went on only one day trip to Lucca. My goal is to spend at least two weeks there, if not more, in the fall of 2021. I really like the idea of including entrance to smaller museums with the Uffizi ticket. Thanks for sharing the article.

And there’ll still be a need for a ZTL, no doubt.

My daughter lives in Switzerland and her employer is making her take her holidays this week, so she's going to Venice. I'll report back on how it goes (she has an Italian passport)

Hi from Italy.
The discussion about slow tourism is interesting, but there are a lot of things to think about.
Less hotel/B&B and more people who sleep in a city for example is difficult to be achieved (referring to the OP article).
There are people whom like cruises and only short excursions on land. Others like to stay a long time in a city (or area).
Some people can afford travel every year for one month to Italy, other can do only 10 days in a lifetime.
Slow travel is much better in my opinion, but is not suitable for everybody. Mass and cheap tourism sometimes create problems, but could even be a way to improve the cultural lever of the most of people.

Anyway: the last one was the first week end of free movement in Italy. On Saturday I was in Ravenna for little daily tour (and a flash mob of Tourist Guides to say "Hallo? We are still here!"). Along the highway from Modena to the seaside direction there was a lot of cars: people going to spend a week end on the beach, even if the weather forecast wasn't so good.
So, yes: the Italians are travelling again and doing short holiday. On the beach are reported the first Germans and Austrians (even if the Austrian border is still closed...), so even foreign tourists are starting to arrive.
About Italians on holiday, will be a very tricky year. A lot of people are still unemployed. All guides and tour leaders are without income from February, bars and restaurants and hotels are working with only the 10/30% of usual customers. A lot of employees have to use their holidays on February/March to stay at home at the beginning of the lock down, so they will have no holidays next Summer (or only few days): factories and offices will be probably regularly opened in July/August and this means few travellers.

While the Uffizi's PassePartout 3-day pass (includes the Uffizi, Pitti, Boboli Gardens, Opificio delle Pietre Dure and National Archaeological Museum) is a nice package for the price, I sure wish they'd reinstate the former coverage of the annual Amici degli Uffizi membership pass. That one allowed us unlimited visits to many more museums the current version (Uffizi, Boboli and Bardini Gardens + Pitti) so was a terrific option for the longer-staying visitor. At 100€ for the family pass, which covered both of us, it was definitely a more economical, less time-crunched option than two, 72-hour Firenzecards (72€ pp then; now 85€ pp.)

We'd intended to buy the ADU again for our next week-long stay but they took the Bargello, Accademia, San Marco, Medici Chapels and a number of others off in 2015 or 2016. :O(

About Italians on holiday, will be a very tricky year. A lot of people
are still unemployed. All guides and tour leaders are without income
from February, bars and restaurants and hotels are working with only
the 10/30% of usual customers. A lot of employees have to use their
holidays on February/March to stay at home at the beginning of the
lock down, so they will have no holidays next Summer (or only few
days): factories and offices will be probably regularly opened in
July/August and this means few travellers.

The demographics of travel are interesting. According to the posts here, US and other trans Atlantic or trans Pacific travelers only make up about 10% to 15% of the travelers in Europe; the rest being European. But I would suspect that the long haul travelers are the ones less affected by the shut down. This shut down hammered "working class" people, the ones that make short trips; and affected long haul "wealthy" travelers to a lesser degree. So how many of the 85% to 90% will be able to travel and how much will they spend vs how many of the 10% to 15% and their money? The $$$ spent by each group probably varies considerably too. It could be a very lean tourism month even with things open to 85% to 90%. Will be interesting to see the statistics when its all said and done.

This shut down hammered "working class" people, the ones that make short trips; and affected long haul "wealthy" travelers to a lesser degree.

All crisis affect much more workers and poor people than wealthy ones.
When there is a Chapter-11 of a big firm, the employees are immediately fired, while managers end with some millions as payout...

The high level tourism is never in crisis anywhere.
But, a museum like Uffizi can really survive with only (let's say) 10'000 wealthy visitors per year? Or it needs 10'000 normal visitors per day to be sustainable?
Talking of culture, is better a museum ticket of 1000€ which only few rich people can afford? If you teach culture and learning and beautyness to everybody the average cultural level could only increase, so you must keep the cost of a visit at an affordable level.

Talking of culture, is better a museum ticket of 1000€ which only few rich people can afford?

Of course not, $250? Maybe.

A museum is not a theme park which will be closed and dismantled when
it's unprofitable.

That very thing can happen. Not, of course, that it's likely to happen to the mighty Uffizi. Do a google on the subject and you'll find articles like these:

https://artdaily.cc/news/48376/Malcolm-S--Forbes-Collection-Highlights--1--Million-Auction-at-Heritage#.XuC-si-z3fY
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-what-happens-when-a-museum-closes
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2015/04/09/largest-private-museum-in-the-u-k-closes-to-auction-off-its-collection

Also of interest:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/arts/design/how-do-you-close-a-museum.html
Looks like there are a lot of factors which determine museum closures and what happens to their collections.

A museum is not a tourist attraction in the first place, but a repository of the cultural(or technical, etc) heritage of a country or city

That is perfectly true. Anyway: the cost for preservation, safekeeping and (more important) new researches on operas and documents is very high and must be paid by somebody. Can a country maintain the many museums and monuments without external (tourism) incomes?
In a perfect World I am the first who say that we can avoid to maintain two aircraft carriers or purchase F35 fighters from US and use the same humongous quantity of money to maintain museums for free visit. Unfortunately is not a perfect world and museums must find an economical sustainability.
Is not a modern problem. We know the economical value of a opera because at one point of its life has been sold. Probably you know the history of the Estense collection: why the most important paintings are in Dresda and not in Modena? Because at one point that collection became too expensive to be kept, the Country was in economical mess and the duke decide to sold the paintings.

One point: be sustainable and be profitable are not synonymous.
If a museum is not sustainable, does who pay for the guards, guides, researchers? They are pro, so they must be paid.

The Hungarian government should support the Pinball Museum in Budapest with tax payer money?

A lot of people who really have no business in a museum make the experience less enjoyable for the others, maybe $1000 tickets is the right move.

A lot of people who really have no business in a museum make the
experience less enjoyable for the others,

Who are these people you speak of???

A museum doesn't need to be sustainable. A museum can surive even
without any visitors. A museum is not a theme park which will be
closed and dismantled when it's unprofitable.

As a taxpayer, this statement scares me. Most museums depend on government money and/or donations. Without that they're not sustainable. What's the point of a museum if it doesn't have visitors? It may as well be a private collection.

A lot of people who really have no business in a museum make the
experience less enjoyable for the others,

Who are these people you speak of???

Allan, I would dime out the people who stand in front of a work of art, blocking others’ viewm, and stare at their phone screen, texting.

The people on their phones and with selfie sticks at a museum are not necessarily poor people who can't afford $1000 entries. I've seen boorish behaviour from all sorts -- including (and often especially) from people who'd consider my yearly income their pocket change.

A museum needs patrons. That's the whole point.

Once the building and the collection is there it's not that expensive
to run a museum.

WHAT?!?! Staff, building maintenance, utilities, insurance, taxes just to name a few expenses. Out of curiosity I just looked at the financial statements for my city's local museum which had 167,000 visitors last year. The annual expenses for 2019 were $9.1 million on revenue of $8.6 million. That seems like a lot of money to me.

luftmensch, maybe you are right There is plenty of money. The only problem is that the wrong people have it; something else society needs to correct.

Once the building and the collection is there it's not that expensive to run a museum.

A National museum in Italy have to make public even its financial report.
For Uffizi, as example, you can find it here (unfortunately written in a difficult economical bureaucratic Italian...): https://trasparenza.uffizi.it/archivio29_bilanci_0_405_731_1.html
To make it simple, the money spent to run the museum during 2018 was near 86 millions of euro. For employees they spend near 1.1 millions of euro.
The incomes where the same amount, so they spent everything they gained making no profit. They received 38 millions of euro from the Country. The selling of tickets make them gain near 33 millions of euro.

A F35 Lockheed Martin Fighter costs near 85 million of dollars, plus 40 millions per per upgrade (the standard version isn't safe and reliable). Every year this airplane costs around 10 millions to be operative.

So you got me to thinking, luftmensch....

Of course most museums are visited by lots of people and it generates
ticket sales that's a great thing, but a museum most not depend on
that.

It is also quite strange that some countries spend a fortune on
building new museums, usually designed by some star-architect, then
again spend a fortune on filling it up with worthless junk by
"contemporary artists"....

But most do depend on that. They have to. If not fully supported by taxes, corporate and private donations, where does the $ otherwise come from pay the curators, the upkeep, the insurance, the utilities, etc.? Value, regarding "worthless junk by contemporary artists" is also in the estimation of the beholder. ALL art was once "contemporary." The talents of artists are not always fully appreciated during their lifetimes, a fair number only achieving notoriety many years after their demise.

The same can be true for composers, writers, photographers and others employed in creative disciplines. Who should be allowed to decide which creative works should be preserved/exhibited for posterity and which should be dengrated or even destroyed?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/13fZCx4RtJ0qjD8tCpqwkWV/how-hitler-set-out-to-destroy-degenerate-art

It's a disgrace for a community, be it a country or a city if they
can't maintain their heritage

Same thing: who should decide which pieces of "heritage" should be preserved and maintained and which should not? History is full of events which have been painful for certain segments of a population, resulting in the destruction of all sorts of associated landmarks and treasures, even to the desecration of tombs, e.g the French Revolution. Other pieces of history were destroyed by persons of power for their own benefit, such as Henry VIII's looting of English churches and destruction of monasteries. Currently, descendants of racial or cultural oppression would rather not see monuments preserved which glorify perpetrators of those events, inciting movements to have them removed or pulling them down themselves.

"Heritage" isn't always noble depending on the individual and how it affects/affected them?

.

Who gets to choose? When does it become "heritage", after 5 years? 50 years? 100 years? Somehow I think its a lot easier for us to want Europe to reflect what we expect when we get there than it is to come to terms with the same questions in our own lives.

Should all of the Lenin and Stalin statutes have been torn down (Budapest saved a lot by moving them to a dedicated park and Putin is talking about rebuilding them in Russia so there is hope). I didnt like it when Budapest renamed Moscow Square and Roosevelt Square; but then its not my city. "Other" countries are facing the same question ... even today. Personally I like "reminders" standing.

What has this got to do with Italy's new strategy post pandemic

I'd like to discuss the American tourist strategy towards Italy post-pandemic, rather than boorish museum patrons. Sadly, you're going to see them regardless of a virus.

If the planets align and more importantly there is no secondary wave of virus, we would like to visit Italy--it would be our 4th trip--in April 2021. Early line on plans late last year was to begin the visit on the Lakes regions of Maggiore and then Garda, never having been, then moseying down to Florence and Rome from there.

But because of the high northern infection rate, and the possibility that it may return this coming fall/winter, I was considering scrapping that plan and just hanging out loosely in Florence and Rome, with plenty of leeway to zig & zag with whatever the current sentiment appears to be at the time.

Of course, the problem is that for April travel, reservations will need to be made by the fall to get the best deals. I have read the 'How Are Your Refunds Going?' thread and have surmised that the tried-and-true protocol of 1st night deposit might not hold true anymore in many places. Or, will it not matter as tourists will not have come back in any numbers, thus air carrier seats & lodging openings everywhere?

And...is passing up on the northern stops and just focusing on Florence & Rome necessarily keeping us safer? I don't think I know the answer to that one.

Food for thought, chime away, thanks!

Jay--my 2-cents is not to rush with the reservations; I don't think anything will sell out but some places may go out of business.

I'd go further south, stay away from the humid, foggy, cold in the north until later in the year.

luftmensch; we could have fun with that discussion for hours. Unfortunately off topic and while I bet you would be constructive, it would be left open to the nutz to comment on.

As for reserving for an April trip to Italy, I would wait. I doubt there will be much selling-out this year or early next year. Shame.

luftmensch .................. how do I say this? BRILLIANT!

Just a note on a story I heard yesterday on NPR, discussing how some museums (I think they mentioned the Sistine Chapel by name) were seeing such record crowds of locals that they were extending hours to accommodate them. It also noted that many of the local visitors had never been too some of these places before, due to crowds of foreign tourists.

A bit off topic, but I wouldn't assume that generous refund policies will be the norm for any future re-occurence.

luftmensch, that last link ........... what can I say? .......... Brilliant!

I once had a University design class where the assignment was to take a solid 12" cube and carve out negative space to create something meaningful. I was too busy drinking and doing other bad stuff to get around to it. On the due day I was asked to present my design. I held up my hands pretending to be holding the cube and I announced that I was so moved by the negative space that I decided to create 100% negative space. I got an A. It was the only thing from that class that I have kept to this day. Its sitting on a shelf in my living room.

We've been seeing the same as Stan on French TV broadcasts: people taking their children to see city sights for the first time because they were too crowded before. This is in France and Italy.

Are there any locals?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-death-of-venice-corrupt-officials-mass-tourism-and-soaring-property-prices-have-stifled-life-in-10251434.html

My daughter got to Venice tonight (Thursday evening). She said some restaurants were open, and she sent snap chats of her twirling in St Mark's Square at midnight. It looked like there were about 8 other people around. They got a hotel with views of a canal for about 100 euros a night.