Most people visit the monumental complex of Piazza dei Miracoli and leave. Others venture farther away from the Leaning Tower and visit Piazza dei Cavalieri and Borgo Stretto. Most people who say they have visited some museums as well have probably only visited Museo dell’Opera del Duomo and maybe Museo delle Sinopie.

There are, however, many other interesting museums in the city. One that is quite famous is Museo di San Matteo, which houses the works of art of  leading 12th-17th century Pisan and Tuscan artists and a rich collection of archaeological treasures. I visited it a few years back, and for some reason, the part I loved the most and which I remember best was the part dedicated to sacred art. I especially loved the wooden sculptures, the large medieval wooden Crosses, and the paintings of the Virgin Mary. One in particular amazed me: the painting of a young, pregnant mother of Jesus, a very unusual image in the Italian Roman Catholic tradition. The building itself is quite interesting too.

Another “minor” museum is Palazzo Reale. For many it is already surprising that Pisa has a “Royal Palace” to begin with. The palace was designed by Buontalenti in the 16th century and was home to the reigning families of Medici, Lorena and Savoia for centuries. The museum is interesting because of both the furnishing and design typical of a Renaissance noble residence and the works of art that it houses. In this museum, I especially liked the tapestries which once belonged to the Medici family and a beautiful polyptych of San Nicola da Tolentino, painted by a young Raphael in 1500.

Throughout the city, there are several other interesting museums and galleries. Palazzo Lanfranchi houses Museo della Grafica (the museum of graphic art). The building also hosts exhibitions on a regular basis. I loved the one dedicated to Keith Haring a few years back.

The newest “cool place to be if you like art” is Palazzo Blu. It is a recently renovated building housing a permanent collection and really nice temporary exhibitions. At the moment, there is an interesting exhibition about the French-Tuscan expedition to Egypt led by the Pisan archaeologist Ippolito Rosellini in 1828-29. An impressive collection of more than 200 archaological finds and watercolour paintings. At the beginning of this year, they hosted a fantastic exhibition devoted to Chagal and the Mediterranean Sea. Palazzo Blu is also home to a specialized bookstore selling art catalogs and art books.

Finally, the minor university museums. The Domus Galileana is well worth a visit: it houses a great library which contains manuscripts by Galileo and other famous physicists such as Enrico Fermi and Antonio Pacinotti. Another interesting collection is that contained in the “Gipsoteca” of the University of Pisa. A “gipsoteca” is a collection of plaster casts. The university collection includes casts of famous works of art used from the 18th century on to teach archaeology and art students.

Last, but not least, a gallery that only very few people know of: CentroArteModerna, a gallery of contemporary art. They have hosted a number of really interesting exhibitions dedicated to contemporary artists and  are appreciated art catalog publishers.

Happy Art Wednesday!!!

I have written about several walking itineraries in Pisa (check my last post about our walk along the river Arno at Le Piagge) and I am very pleased to see that over the last few years many organized walking tours have been organized.

Pisa is a perfect place for walking: it’s flat, so you don’t need to be particularly fit to explore it on foot, and the center is relatively small, so it can be properly explored in  a limited amount of time.

“Walking Pisa” are 3 hour tours of the center offered on a regular basis (until November 20, 2010). It is possible to join these walking tours on Mondays at 3 p.m., on Thursdays at 3 p.m., and on Saturdays at 10:30 a.m. The tours are very affordable and cost only 12 euros per person. They are free for kids under 15 years old. It is not necessary to book in advance, so it is possible to join them at the very last minute.

For those who love walking, a nice event is the Tuscany Walking Festival which includes walks in the best nature parks in the region.

Another interesting idea is Urban Trekking. The website is very interesting, and it includes a list of cities where urban trekking itineraries are available.

Today it’s the first day of spring, even though it’s quite grey out there. But the birds are singing, so that’s a good sign: no rain in the immediate future!

Over the last few days, I’ve had many interesting opportunities to think about the eternal struggle between what’s local and what’s global, interested promotion or objective commentary, etc. ;o)

I have joined the Local Travel Movement (and I need to thank Ethan Gelber of the incredible WHL Group), “a platform promoting the local way of travel – getting in touch with the local people, seeing a place like a local”, or at least as much as this is possible (there would be much to say about this as well).

Then this morning, I have had an interesting exchange (actually it was still going on now while I was writing, and I was loving it!) with the Lara Dunston and Terence Carter on their Gran Tourismo Project world tour, which I find pure genius (both on their part and on Home Away Holiday Rental group’s part).

They have Puglia (Apulia) on their list of places to go to, and they have chosen as their home base away from home a trullo, I guess in the area of Alberobello, but I might be wrong. I read this in one of their tweets, so I replied (all via Twitter) that I thought that that’s a very nice choice but a bit touristy. They disagreed of course and they replied that

what’s one person’s ‘hidden gem’ is another’s ‘local’.

My point was though, that of all the hidden gems for foreigners, they had chosen the least hidden and the type of accommodation that I am quite sure is the least popular among the locals (although I might be talking nonsense and for this we’ll have to wait for their certainly fabulous blog posts) and the most popular among the yet relatively few foreign travelers. The locals (meaning Italians)  that I know (but there will be many others that I don’t know and who can disproof my words) would probably go to a hotel on the beach, foreigners will probably like the trullo more.

Whenever I read about Apulia (and over the years I have seen innumerable “new Tuscany” type of slogans, ads and articles), I always see this exact area mentioned. That’s all. Since the main thing on their blog is that “they’ll be travelling slowly, living like locals” and that their mission is “to explore more enriching and authentic ways of travelling, and make travel more meaningful and more memorable”, it just seemed the least felicitous choice, since trulli were progressively abandoned by the locals and are now mostly holiday accommodations.

They replied by asking “if Apulia is touristy then what is Tuscany?”. The numbers of both tourists visiting Tuscany and the number of accommodation facilities present in the region are enormously higher than the Apulia numbers. And they also pointed out that renting a trullo was like renting a countryside villa in Tuscany. And I totally agree. And that was also exactly my point (it was probably the “non-said” we were not quite agreeing on).

Tuscany is enormously popular. Yet in a tiny fraction of its territory, and there are many areas that are just “outside the Tuscan sun“, because the industry keeps pushing the usual popular spots. And again, my criticism was not in the choice of the Apulia region, but of the location or even the type of accommodation in Apulia.

I feel that if one wants to truly have the local experience, one should probably chose a less popular destination in Apulia (or Tuscany).

We exchanged a few numbers after I said that choosing Alberobello in Apulia was essentially like choosing Chianti in Tuscany, and they said that there was no comparison between the 256 properties in Chianti and the 41 properties in Apulia. But in fact there is: 5% of the total in both cases.

No surprise either: obviously people invest in renovating properties where there is a larger demand (or like in our case with Casina di Rosa because they are just plain crazy and it was my great-grandparents home, and it is my pension plan! LOL ).

They pointed out that theirs is, in the end, a marketing/PR exercise for Home Away, and that one of the major factors that determined their choice was that they had to find a place with internet access, which is vital for their project. I understand this all, of course. In fact, it was the fact that it totally shows that made me leave the first tweet. I would have never thought that a tiny comment like that would have started such an interesting exchange though! And I hope that Lara and Terence take it the way it is: just as as minor criticism (but I wouldn’t even call it like that) on a tiny part of their project.

And mostly some good food for thought for me.

This brings back the usual dualism of local and global, sustainability and promotion, etc. It is truly difficult to avoid a conflict of interests (for all of us working in tourism and living in a tourist area).

I had read with great interest the blog post Gran Tourismo: where to draw the line between travel journalism and PR on the Going Local Travel site. I always follow their blog posts and their tweets and I love them.

My question was essentially: I know they need to find accommodation among the options advertised in Home Away, but why a trullo, which is, in my very personal opinion, the least authentic way to experience Apulia, and why choose something in the most popular area in Apulia? Why not a vacation apartment in the Taranto area, or in the Foggia area, or anywhere else that is not one of the few parts of Apulia that is actually known to foreigners already?

And here there is the usual vicious circle: the area is the most popular because it’s the most beautiful. The accommodation was the most suitable because the owners had good reasons to give internet access and fix it up properly because they had a good demand. This type of accommodation is quite popular because it’s the most out-of-the-ordinary. It’s in Home Away because the area is of tourist interest already. And there we go again.

So the problem here is what is the local experience we want to look for while traveling and we want to offer to travelers?

Does it mean that they should have chosen a less nice place because more authentic? Probably not, but there were certainly less popular areas in Apulia and less out-of-the-ordinary types of accommodation that they could have chosen.

I am sure that as usual they will find good local things to do even in a relatively popular area, and they will write amazing posts as usual that will prompt us all to travel to anywhere they will choose to go.

Personally, I would have chosen either somewhere near Taranto or on the western coast of Apulia, or a completely different destination that really deserves being discovered and is still off-the-beaten-path like the Marches (getting there), or Abruzzo and Molise or Basilicata,  or even Valle d’Aosta in Northern Italy, so as to stick to both the marketing/PR intent and the local travel promotion one.

They are right in comparing it with what happens in Tuscany (I can only really talk about the reality I know well). But if we are really to promote local travel, beside our promotional (or marketing/PR) exercise, then we should point out that there aren’t just countryside villas with swimming pool in Tuscany or trulli in Apulia. And actually few of the locals have access to either one of those… You can always rent a nicely done rental apartment in a village with real locals as you neighbours and go to the local public pool with them as it happens with the rentals at Casa Gigliola in Monticiano.

The internet access problem. That’s a bad one. You can always look for a local solution, though, for instance by asking the locals. In Italy, for instance, you can buy an internet usb keydrive with 30 hours of internet access for 10 euros or 40 hours for 9 euros. Of course 3G coverage is not always good. But, sorry to say, that’s what locals have to deal with.

A reality check for all of us, I guess.

Related articles

• “Gentle Travel” is the way to go.
• Words matter: on “local travel” and other catchphrases
• Luxury travel and local communities
• The place you call a destination, for some people is home

Every time I go to the UK or North America I come back thinking that, even if they don’t have a fraction of the tourist attractions we have in Italy, the difference is not so evident in the end, because they know how to make the best out of what they have. Tourism promotion and infrastructure in those countries is simply exceptional. The materials, the campaigns, the museums: everything is for the common people, and all the tourism businesses are equally promoted and enhanced.

For a discussion on the more democratic and less élitist attitude towards museums and culture in general, see this article on Tuscany Arts, the blog about art in Tuscany by the region tourism promotion team. Actually, I should say that the Regione Toscana represents a noticeable exception in the sad panorama of Italian tourism promotion: Tuscany is trying to fully exploit the visibility given by social networks through its “Voglio Vivere Così Social Media Team” and All Thing Tuscany.

But since I feel a bit grumpy today, and a brief Twitter exchange with two very interesting people, Andy Hayes (@andrewghayes) and Flip Florence (@FlipFlorence), inspired me, I’ll just list a few things I don’t like about Italian tourism promotion.

1. I don’t like most official websites. I don’t find them attractive at all and they are rarely suitable to perform the function a tourism-related website should perform, i.e. attract the traveler, make him or her dream of the location, convey the spirit of the place. They are often very plain, graphically unappealing, too “crowded“, often old and dated in their look. Often, they work fine in Explorer but not in Firefox or Safari. They are usually not suitable to be browsed on mobile phones.
2. Most recent articles on official tourism websites are only in Italian. Many sites don’t even bother having all the textual content translated. Therefore, it often happens that the most interesting and recent stuff on the home page does not have a corresponding version in the other languages of the website, which makes it impossible to use the information unless you want to take the time to translate it yourself. Some of the translations are really bad, clearly not done by professionals. I’ll never forget the title on the cover of the official Pisa tourism magazine that we distributed to over 200 participants in an important conference we had spent a year planning: it promoted the “51th Regatta” (Bad English 101).
3. I find it upsetting and unacceptable that most official sites, including the national ENIT ITALIA one, do not include regularly-licensed self-catering accommodations: Case Vacanza. We pay the same taxes as hotels and other “strutture turistico-alberghiere”, and we go through the same amount of trouble to comply with all the safety and hospitality regulations and yet, vacation rentals are not even a category in the accommodation search on the website (whose navigation, by the way, is made up of two dreadful buttons named accommodation and accommodation 2).
4. The promotional material is often useless. I remember the book that the Maremma tourism promotion distributed last year and which was full of completely useless stuff for the tourist and it was more suitable as a phone book than as a resource that accommodation facilities could make available to their guests. And it looked expensive too, in glossy paper, with a hard cover binder. Basically wasted money. The publications are often wordy, and boring. Guides to museums and monuments, or cities sound like lectures rather than entertainment, which is what tourism is for most people. The graphics once again are plain. I think the country lacks real communication professionals specifically trained for tourism communication.
5. There is no coordination between the different entities in tourism promotion, and this results in a general confusion in which much energy is wasted to attain very poor results. The regional site and council has nothing (as far as I can see) to do with the local tourism councils (e.g. Terre di Siena – just redesigned, Maremma tourism council, Pisa Unica Terra, etc.), and with the “consorzi” (another Italian mystery… basically associations of private business owners who can get public money…), and the local tourism associations (associazioni turistico-culturali or ricreative) and pro-loco associations (village and town associations). The result is that there is no central database of events. There is no sharing of resources. If you want to know what’s going on in Tuscany you need to check 30 different sites, and most of the time you’ll have no idea of what’s going on, because the page is only in Italian.
6. At the local level, which is what is most relevant for local tourism businesses, events are almost always planned at the very last minute, which is of absolutely no use if you work with foreign guests and want to use the events as a means to promote the area. We need the events planned and published at least 6 months in advance. And we need stuff that is good for both Italians and foreigners.
7. Most of the promotion is always focused on the major “pull factors” of an area, that is on the most popular stuff. The stuff everybody already knows about. Even if I understand that you need the “hot spots” to attract people, you also need to promote the lesser-known destinations that are off-the-beaten-path for no good reason than not having been promoted well before. I remember Montalcino °before Brunello was Brunello”: the town was just as beautiful, the wine was just as good, but the marketing and advertising campaigns had not been nearly as effective. There are many other places that are just as beautiful as Montalcino or Cortona, just as well located, but which have not had that massive amount of money poured into promoting them, or a rich American writer who bought a house there and wrote 2 novels about it, or vampires saving mortal girls in their main squares. It should be the tourism councils’  job to promote the territory, and not the local Castello Banfi’s.
8. Most of the initiatives promoted by local tourism councils involve some larger private business, which in the end is after its own profit. Consorzi are like that most of the time: they usually involve a bunch of desperate accommodation facility owners and a travel agency that manages their promotion and reservations. The larger the consorzio the smaller the visibility of the individual properties, yet the profits of the travel agency remain the same. Every year the local tourism council organizes seminars for the tourism business owners and every year the same large web agency gives a presentation, offers a free evaluation of your website and pours a bunch of professionally sounding words into non-web-savvy people’s ears (web 2.0, viral marketing, social networks, open websites, etc) and then tries to sell their services. Nobody needs to spend money for what they offer. The council should teach people how to do it themselves. Then, if they want, they can choose to pay someone to do it for them, but not without first knowing how easy it is. And ultimately I don’t understand how a public institution selects a private business to give it such overwhelming visibility. It doesn’t seem fair to all the other similar agencies, the local ones, that pour their money into the area and are never contacted to give presentations or offer suggestions. Another Italian mystery.
9. I know that in international fairs some tourism promotion agencies offer free holidays and other free stuff. How do they decide who is to offer the free stuff (and hence to get all that publicity)? I’ve never been contacted once.
10. The Italian government now offers “holiday vouchers” to low-income families. That is a good idea, because it creates opportunities for the tourism businesses and it improves the economy. I admit the first time I took a look at the website I was upset because it was not possible to sign up to be one of the places where you can spend the vouchers, and yet there were so many commercials about it, etc. Now they have reopened the subscriptions again, so that problem is solved. What’s not solved or fair is that if you accept holiday vouchers, in order to cash them you have to go to one of the branches of Banca San Paolo, you get reimbursed 45-60 days later and you have to pay 4% + VAT as a processing fee… Now, why in the world should I pay 4% + IVA for accepting vouchers?! If the State wants to give that money to Banca San Paolo it should come out of their pockets, not ours! Another Italian mystery.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve happened to walk through Piazza San Silvestro quite often. I used to come here all the time when I was in my first year in University, because I had a dear friend who lived in the students’ dorm that opened onto the square. Back then, there were fewer cars around, and the square could be appreciated in full while you walked down from the Lungarno, towards the Casa dello Studente “Thouar”. The dormitory is closed now, and the building is being renovated and pay parking spaces are all around the central garden and the side walks. The square is not less beautiful, though.

Located outside the major tourist routes in the city, Piazza San Silvestro has an ancient and glorious history. Medieval buildings encircle a central garden with tall pine trees and benches. One side of the square is occupied by the monumental complex composed by the Church of San Silvestro and the old convent.

The Church of San Silvestro dates back to the 12th century, but its façade is Baroque in style. Built at the end of the 18th century, it has three portals, and two statues representing St. Sylvester and St. Dominic decorate the top corners. The church will soon become part of the National Museum of San Matteo, and will be probably be used as a location for conferences and exhibitions.

Next to the church, the old convent is a majestic building with typical Renaissance features. The convent was closed in 1810 by the French. Following Napoleon’s direct orders, an institution like the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris was founded in Pisa, and the convent was transformed into the first seat of the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, which remains one of the most prestigious universities in Europe to this day.

Today the headquarters of the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa are located in Piazza dei Cavalieri and for several years, the convent was used as a dorm for students attending the University of Pisa, until the building was in such bad shape that it was not safe to live in it any longer.

After a couple of years of neglect, the entire complex is presently undergoing some massive renovation works, thanks to a conspicuous donation by the Monte dei Paschi di Siena Foundation. It has been given to the Scuola Normale di Pisa and will be used for student housing. Part of the building, whose renovations have already been completed, houses now one of the most modern and advanced laboratories for nanotechnology research, called Laboratorio NEST (National Enterprise for nanoScience and nanoTechnology).

Looking for great accommodation in Pisa? Check our self-catering apartment near the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the relationship between luxury hotels or resorts and the local communities. I read about the famous British chef Gordon Ramsay coming to manage the restaurant of the brand new luxury resort in Tuscany called “Castel Monastero”, just outside Siena.  My first reaction was, are Tuscan chefs so bad that we need to “import” a British one?!

I suppose it’s a marketing strategy. At least that gives me an idea of the type of crowd they want to attract (the Russian version of the website gives also a clue about the audience they’re after!). I went to look at the hotel site and I saw that the cheapest room is almost 400 euros per night, which obviously makes it a luxury place for (maybe) many but (definitely) not for all…

I realized there is something that I really don’t like about this kind of tourism ventures.

Let me be clear: I have absolutely nothing against Castel Monastero, Mr. Ramsay or the many other excellent foreign chefs working in Tuscany. I know for a fact that they are good, and probably lovely people. I wish them all the best for their venture: why not? They have beautiful places in wonderful locations. We might even end up staying there when we win the lottery!

It’s just that I would like for these “colonies” to contribute to the local economy in a substantial way. I believe in tourism as a way to improve the life of the local communities besides that of the tourism-related business people, and I cringe at the idea of a place that has nothing or next to nothing to contribute to the local economy and environment (both the flora and the fauna, the people and the places, the plants and the animals…), which might not even be the case of Castel Monastero, I have no idea. I’m just talking in abstract terms here.

I’m a dreamer.

I found an interesting article: Can luxury travel be responsible travel?

The concept of “responsible travel” in the article is mainly about responsibility towards the environment, whereas my main concern is responsibility towards the local people. I suppose I’m more interested in ethical travel than in responsible travel… but shouldn’t it be the same thing?

Ms. Howse, Sustainability Director of CC Africa, says that

The luxury traveler potentially (and certainly in our case) delivers significantly greater positive impact to the cause of environmental protection and the support of communities as a result of how much money they spend than the budget (although very well-meaning) traveler.

And she continues:

Also the income introduced by the high end operations is often the only way the wildlife land can be sustainably defended from other forms of land use. The small amounts of money that can be charged for the “village stay” option is usually insufficient to protect any meaningful tracts of land from other forms of land use.

Now, this might be a positive example of a Luxury travel company, but is this always the case?

I am not sure what my opinion is about this. My gut feeling tells me that there should not be companies that don’t even try to recruit people to put in responsibility positions in the area where they open their  structures. There should not be places that don’t seek out equipment and services in the area where they are located, instead importing all they need. There should not be places that do not bring any improvements to the communities in which they plant themselves.

But can you regulate this? I believe that you somewhat should, but that it is realistically not feasible. Luxury places should be ethical, and invest in their environment at large: finance projects, support improvements, spend part of their big money in the area where they are, so that it stays as charming as they found it and possibly even more so.

Is this wrong or too much to ask? The truth is that I don’t know.

Anyway, here is a list of interesting reading about these matters. A lot of food for thought. However most of these articles are about exotic destinations, but the matter is the same even in a popular and richer destination like Tuscany. And yet nobody talks about it.

• What is community based tourism?
• Responsible travel and responsible tourism
• Supporting local businesses: How your holidays help
• Should all inclusive holidays be banned?

I’d love to hear other people’s opinions on this, as, I admit, I’m very confused.

For those who never miss a chance to try inexpensive traditional food, drink good wine and dance in an Italian square with the locals, here is a list of the sagre in Tuscany in the month of June.

For those who like “tortelli“, large ravioli with ricotta and spinach, here are some sagre dedicated to this type of pasta:

• Sagra del tordello d’oro, Strettoia, Pietrasanta (Lucca), June 1, 2, 5 and 7. The specialty is the “tordello” with meat sauce.
• Sagra del tortello, Sieci (Florence), June 11-21.
• Sagra del tortello, Ronta (Florence), June 13-14 and 20-21.
• Sagra del tortello, Monterotondo (Grosseto), June 26-28.

For mushroom lovers, even if they are not summer products, here is a list of mushroom-related festivals:

• Sagra del fungo porcino, Palazzolo di Incisa Valdarno (Florence), June 5-7 and 12-14. Porcini mushrooms are the protagonists of this sagra.
• Sagra del fungo prugnolo, Firenzuola (Florence), June 6-7. Prugnolo mushrooms, music and good wine.
• Sagra del fungo porcino, Casia di Reggello (Florence), June 19-28.
• Sagra del tartufo, Cellai (Florence), June 6-7, 12-14, 19-21 and 26-28. Festival dedicated to truffle.

For soups and “minestre” lovers:

• Sagra della zuppa contadina (farmer’s soup festival), Piano del Quercione (Lucca), June 5-7, 12-14, 19-21 and 26-28.
• Sagra della minestra di pane (ribollita), Vitolini-Vinci (Florence), June 20-21.
• Zuppa di cavolo (cabbage soup) e coniglio fritto alla fabbrichese (fried rabbit), Fabbrica di Peccioli (Pisa), July 4-5 and 11-12.

More unusual tastes:

• Sagra del pinolo (pine nut festival), Chiesanuova Val di Pesa (Florence), June 5-14. Festival dedicated to a traditional dessert called “pinocchiata” or “croccante di pinoli”, pine-nut brittle.
• Festa del pesce (seafood festival), Caletta di Castiglioncello (Livorno), June 13-14. The festival is mostly famous for the “padellone”, a large 4 m wide frying pan containing 850 liters of oil used to fry fish.
• Sagra del pesce (seafood festival), Agliana (Pistoia), June 29.
• Sagra della schiacciata (focaccia), Buti (Pisa), June 1-2 and 6-7.
• Sagra della Pizza, Ponte a Egola (Pisa), June 13-21.
• Sagra del Ciaffagione (sort of a rustic pancake, typical of the village), San Casciano dei Bagni (Pisa), June 13-14 and 20-21.
• Sagra estiva della focaccetta, Quercia di Aulla (Massa), July 3-5.
• Sagra del bico (a type of bread), Cetona (Siena), June 26-28 and Junly 3-5.
• Sagra della lumaca (snail), Poggio Murella, Manciano (Grosseto), June 12-14 (suggested by Donna of MaremmaGuide.com – Thank you!).

Finally, two festivals that focus on a series of traditional dishes of the area in which they take place:

• Sagra della miseria (the festival of poverty), Colle Val d’Elsa (Siena), June 6-7, 13-14, 20-21 and 27-28. The festival is dedicated to the “cucina povera toscana”, the humblest dishes of the local tradition such as cured meats, ribollita, panzanella, tripe, beans, bruschette and home-made desserts.
• Festa della Fame e della Sete (the festival of hunger and thirst), Filattiera (Massa), June 25-28. Traditional food of the Lunigiana.

Over the past few days I have enjoyed reading a number of articles about travel issues in general. One I have particularly enjoyed, and I am sorry that I did not get a chance to read before, is Another new local travel knowledge site by Stephen Chapman, founder of Make Travel Fair and editor of Make Travel Fair UK.

He discusses a very interesting issue there, that is

“how quickly a phrase or an idea can catch on and seem to spawn a whole new generation of websites almost overnight”,

more specifically he deals on how

‘Local travel’ feels like it’s hit the big time at the moment, everyone wants a piece of the action, everyone wants to get involved in a web start-up and wrestle to become the next big thing in travel.

The article got me thinking about a number of issues. We have a vacation rental in Tuscany. We made the decision to make it as locally-rooted as possible from the very moment we started it. It seemed the obvious way to go, despite being a clear counter-tendency in a place like Tuscany, where “off-the-beaten-path” (if such thing still exists here) is generally equated with “completely deprived of any tourist interest at all”. In such a well-know region, if nobody has already made an area “popular”, then it must be because there is nothing to do or see there.

Being extremely local myself (my entire family has lived in this village for at least 4 generations before me), and stubborn and proud too, I knew that there was much to do and see in and around the village. And that there was much to explain to non-local people about us and what we are about around here. Thank God, the many returning guests we have had over the years give us reason to believe that we are on the right track.

We started in the “post Frances Meyes era“, after the huge fuss created by the bestseller  “Under the Tuscan Sun“.  A great help for tourism in Tuscany, I won’t deny that (by the way, Mrs. Meyes, when is your next Tuscany-based bestseller coming out?! After the financial crisis, we need your help boosting up tourism again in this part of the world!!!) and in a way a voice speaking in favour of going slow and local, but one which pushed areas like ours even  further “out of the Tuscan Sun” in a way.

We made the choice of working in a way so as to show people what life in this part of the world is really like, in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of way. But, let me tell you, it is really hard. And I have to say, harder and harder these days for reasons that we cannot understand completely. Or rather, after reading Stephen Chapman’s article, now maybe I can.

Because, as I read somewhere this morning, “we do not see things as they are, we see them as we are”, more and more people seem to come expecting to find, in a village of 350 people in the countryside, the comforts that you can enjoy in modern cities, the same level of organization that you have in Switzerland, the same road conditions, the same availability of services that you have at home, etc. An attitude that, I have to say, was rarer in the immediate “after Under the Tuscan Sun”, when many people travelled so as to experience the type of difficulties that Mrs. Meyes wrote about, wrapping them up in a well-presented stereotyped package. (By the way, for a funny review of the blockbuster movie based on the novel see Miss Expatria’s Scathing Movie Review: Under the Tuscan Sun – don’t read it if you are a fan! ;oP)

And here is the connection with Stephen’s article about the (perhaps excessive) use of the term “local” in travel-related matters today.

I think what nowadays is called “local” is what was before one of the many facets of sustainable tourism. I remember reading the articles in the Journal of Tourism Studies back in the late 90’s and up to 2007 when the publication was interrupted (my real job is researching the English language and linguistics for tourism), and noticing a slow shift in “key words” and “key concepts”. First it was all about eco-tourism, then it was all about sustainable tourism and now it’s all about “going local“.

It’s not just a matter of definitions though, it is more a process of “specialization”, as each of these concepts were already contained in the others as they are obviously all connected. Specialized research draws from and feeds back into the non-specialized universe, because, besides being researchers, scholars are first and foremost people immersed in the out-of-the-academia world like the rest of us.

As an “out-and-out” supporter of the necessity of using local resources as much as possible, my opinion is that if a  “fashionable key phrase” helps us make our voice heard, there’s a good reason to  use it.  Unfortunately, as a linguist, I am also aware that what happens is that by using it, its meaning gets “worn out”, to the point where it becomes nothing more than a catch-phrase for most people, especially for the “general public”, to which, more often than not, travelers belong.

So could it be that going local is already a fashion rather than a well-considered travel choice? Can we expect to see more and more people look for local while expecting global?

I strongly believe that our role as people in the travel business (even though in different ways or for different reasons) is to help preserve the meaning of words. We need to help people remember what experiencing the local way of life means, and choose their holidays accordingly.

Travel relying on local resources cannot be mass tourism, I am afraid, otherwise it cannot be sustained. However, the fact that it exists should be made known to the “masses” (please forgive me the use of a term with such negative connotations: I am just trying to maintain semantic coherence), but, since words do indeed matter, it should be presented for what it is, as it can be the best option for many but not for all, especially in areas that are very different from the travellers’ country of origin. This is not the case of Italy, obviously, which, in many domains at least, is still a modern, comfortable country. And yet, it has enough to put some people off.

So maybe the next page I will add to our website is a list of reasons for travelers to chose our homes, and an even longer list to not choose them if they expect the phrase “to feel at home away from home” to mean something other than that we are very happy to welcome them as we would do with our own local friends and that we will do our best to show them how the place they call a destination, for some people is home.

Hopefully, they will feel it’s their home too for a week or so.

Today, my source of inspiration was a chat I had with Giulia of the beautiful Locanda della Valle Nuova (Le Marche) about an interesting article about ecotourism that she posted on Twitter.

The author, Len Cordiner, CEO of whl.travel, discusses the problem of the certification of accommodations and tours as “eco-friendly”, a matter that I will leave aside here. But the interesting point he makes is that he believes that something did not quite work as planned, as many people tend to equate

green vacation with doing it tough – hard beds and tasteless food. Green or sustainable holidays were perceived as something only tree huggers would do, not at all fun or enjoyable.

For this reason, he says, we need a new thinking and his proposal is to engage

“travellers with a coherent and inviting new vision of what ‘eco’ (now perhaps better known as responsible or sustainable or even slow) tourism is really about.

This done, travellers will need to be engaged in driving change throughout the supply chain by giving feedback to other travellers, much in the same way they are prompting evolution in the hotel industry (including new brands) with their feedback on services. I imagine a slow tourism version of Trip Advisor being what it looks like.”

I read this and I thought: “this is not a new way of thinking, this is what we have been doing for a while”. And indeed Slow Tourism is a well-established reality, as the lively community participating in the Slow Travel Forum and contributing to the site evidences clearly.

There are many professionals in Italy that adhere to the slow travel philosophy, and abroad as well (think about the Slow Travel Tours). We organizied a Get Together in Italy both last year (we hosted the first Italian Slow Travel Inn Keepers in our village in 2008) and this year Megan of Bella Vita Italia organized the get-together in Lerici, Liguria.

Nothing new about using travellers’ feedback either: Slow Travel has been posting slow travellers’ reviews for years.

So what’s new then? Giulia rightly pointed out that Mr. Cordiner brings into the mix the idea of ecotourism and sustainability. He actually writes “even slow“, as if “slow travel” was one of the possible ways to make tourism sustainable. I do agree on this: slow travel may and should indeed be sustainable.

People from different areas of expertise though should not work separately to defining the new paradigms of tourism research and practice. Tourists, practitioners and researchers should all work together.

I started wondering about why, in a time in which travelling slow seems to be getting quite popular (at least according to this article), I still felt that there is more to it than just pace and greenness…

I have been talking about this with 4 dear friends, with whom I feel I have much in common both from a human and professional point of view and with whom I have often discussed tourism-related matters. We share some fundamental views about both travelling and welcoming people: one is Giulia of La Locanda della Valle Nuova, near Urbino in Le Marche, and the others are Letizia of La Madonna del Piatto, near Assisi in Umbria, Diana of Baur B&B, near Acqui Terme in Piedmont, and Megan of La Bella Vita Italia, in Lerici in Liguria.

The article also reminded me of David Peat’s work on Gentle Action (he’s a physicist and philosopher…, but that’s not the point, if you are curious to see what he’s up to in his small hilltop hamlet in Tuscany you can check the site of the cultural center he has created). He has similar ideas on social and economic issues. He says something important, I believe. He speaks of

“actions which begin from within the system in question and emerge in creative ways.. These may range from projects on an international scale to a simple action by an individual. Such actions generally flow from what Peat has termed “creative suspension” – that temporary pause when we listen and learn what the system has to teach us before taking action”.

This got me thinking, and I realized that this is exactly what defines my attitude to travel and tourism and this is what I think I share with Giulia, Letizia, Diana and Megan.

We believe in travelling slow, so that we can properly enjoy what is local, and actually learn from it. We do all we can to offer our guests this very same experience when we are the hosts rather than the travellers: we believe in offering a true and authentic local experience, in allowing people to see Italy and our life as it really is by helping them to take advantage of what the areas in which we are located has to offer.

I believe in promoting a type of travel experience which does not change the area in which I operate, but rather touches the people who come here. I don’t want to exploit, but to enrich, both my homeland and the travelers who come see it.

I have understood that I believe not only in Slow Travel and Slow Tourism, but in a true Gentle Travel, in Gentle Tourism and by this I mean a type of tourism experience which is sustainable, which promotes what’s truly local, the way it is, without adjusting it to please the traveler, and which for this reason allows him or her to truly experience everyday life in its most authentic aspects.

And at the same time it allows the locals to be able to show what they have to offer. This is why I have contacted the local wineries to organize wine tastings rather than sending people to a more famous  area farther away. I have found local farmers who can show their olive groves, or take people out for a ride with their horses. I have found a local bike shop whose owners are happy to take people out for a bike tour. I have found local people willing to teach family cooking. I invite people to shop at the local stores, so that they can truly experience the local way of life. I try to show what the system has to give.

I believe that travellers should get in contact with the local communities, enrich them and learn from them, looking at them with an open mind.

I hope I’ll be able to promote this idea by helping people to travel in a gentle way to Tuscany and at the same time by helping locals to bring out all the amazing things that I know for a fact this area has to offer.

I really hope I’ll be able to help my area speak for itself and help people to listen to it.