ROME (ITALPRESS) – Tourism 2024 “went very well, a trend is being consolidated: before, the majority of tourists in Italy were Italians, now it has become foreigners. We have to recover some Italians, this summer we lost them,” also because “prices were very high in some destinations.” This was said by Alessandra Priante, president of Enit, interviewed by Claudio Brachino for the TV magazine Italpress Economy, a few days after the closing of the G7 Tourism in Florence. “There had never been a G7 on tourism, we made history,” she explained. The one in Florence “was an extraordinary event not only because of all the hospitality that the ministry also put on in Florence (the location was Palazzo Vecchio, there were visits to the Uffizi, there was a wonderful side event on a historic train to Monteriggioni with chef Heinz Beck),” but also because “it introduced artificial intelligence in a serious way, at the level of cohesion in international politics,” he recalled.Tourism “is an economic sector and, as with all economic sectors, decisions must be made on the basis of good data,” the Enit president stressed. Artificial intelligence allows us, in a situation where there is a lot of disharmony of data-not only between countries, but also in the same country between different regions-to make a synthesis, to read a trend or to enter that predictive mechanism that is fundamental for tourism. “A Tourism Pact was also signed in Florence. “Before the G7, Minister Santanchè brought together the whole industry, both vertically and horizontally, together with transport” to sign a pact “on 10 directives on which we need to move in a coordinated way. The pact is also a symbol: if we are truly united and look in the same direction, then we can move forward.” The minister also set as “a team effort” the Jubilee in Rome. “The City of Rome has reassured us in every way that it is equipping itself,” Priante stressed. According to forecasts, “the numbers will be there: we are talking about tens of millions” of arrivals, “spread throughout the course of the Jubilee year,” but it must be considered that “it is not all pilgrims who will arrive.” There are “tourists who want to come to Rome despite the Jubilee” and “we must not discourage them,” but “we want to decompress the center of Rome.” This is why “we work with the Lazio Region” to promote “beauties such as Tivoli, Viterbo or Fiuggi. “For Priante, “overturism does not exist, it is a wrong word if you consider it as an exogenous atmospheric phenomenon: for me it is called mismanagement. The problem is one of awareness and also of clear management of tourist flows. “In the future, we need to focus on training. “We need to recover the young people who have left, and to do that, we need the private sector to help ensure that young people who want to work in tourism have a career prospect,” but “training is crucial because it allows not only technical training, but also to prepare future generations. “There are two innovative initiatives that Enit is working on. “The first Italian hospitality school, as part of the Mattei Plan,” stressed the Enit chairwoman: “This is a great project with Egypt, which I hope we will be able to replicate in other neighboring countries, with which we train young Egyptians to do technical work and to come and work in Italy with a regular contract. No other European country has done this before, we are the pioneers,” he recalled. The second major initiative that “I’m putting together with the rectors of Bocconi and Luiss” is the creation of “postgraduate courses but, in the future, also degrees in International Tourism Management in English, to train tourism managers: tourism must be a career prospect, on a par with the director of a bank or a large company,” Priante concluded.
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