The tourism panel at ToscanaLab 2010 resulted in an interesting “manifesto” made up of 5 points. In order to make sure ToscanaLab was a useful experience, I think some “soul-searching 2.0” is in order. So I thought that, as people in the tourism business, we should probably ask ourselves what we do or should do to comply with the 5 points of the manifesto.

1. Changing perspective: from “me” and “you”, to “us”.

Travelers and people in the tourism businesses should stop working as two separate categories and instead they should work together to create a better tourist experience. Of course there are many different ways in which the different domains in the tourism sector can apply this first “recommendation”.

As far as we are concerned, we participate in online communities and social media so that we can interact with the travelers to our area. This has the double advantage of (hopefully) being helpful to people who want to visit the area, and of gaining a lot of useful information on what they expect and hope to find when they arrive. This way we can try to offer something that makes them happy, even if on occasion, we have to “adjust” their expectations to the reality of what they will find.

We also try to interact with our guests when they are here as much as possible. We like to get to know them both before they show up and after, so that when they finally arrive, it feels like those friends you haven’t seen for a long time are finally here. Unfortunately, work sometimes prevents us from dedicating as much time as we would like to our guests.

2. The web is a real space, not just a means

The web must not be just another advertising platform. The web is a real place where real life happens, where we meet our guests and colleagues, make friends, create relationships. We have been extending our lives from off-line to on-line for a few years now. I feel quite confident when I say that many of the people I have met online are indeed friends.

We do not just promote our properties, we promote our area, via this blog, via our presence in forums, via Twitter, and Facebook. And not just in the hope of getting more guests, but in the hope of making people discover where and how we live.

This comes from our belief that tourism is not just “being in a place” or “seeing a place”, it is experiencing a place, living it with its peculiarities, and with its good and bad sides. I do not believe that a territory should change to meet the demand. The demand should be created among those people who are interested in seeing what a territory is and what it offers (and not what they expect it to be and to offer), otherwise we become just a uniform brand with no individuality. I believe that, even thorugh all destinations can be sold to anybody, the truth is that not all destinations will make everybody equally happy.

Ultimately, online we present ourselves, who we are, what we do, what we believe, in the hopes of finding like-minded people who enjoy what we enjoy and therefore to whom we can cater to the best of our abilities.

And here I think point 1 and 2 meet.

I hear people talk about the importance of instant booking. We will never, ever offer that.

We want to have contact with the people we welcome into our homes before we accept a booking. We want to make sure they know what they will get, and that the “us” will work. We need to know that they are the type of people who will be happy with what we are and what we offer and with the philosophy that forms the foundation of our work. To do this, we need to meet in this “Mid-Earth” called the Web and interact as in real life to see if we and you can really be us. If not, then we have never been afraid to say “sorry, we think you are looking for something we cannot offer“.

And here we move to the third point.

3. Internet helps extend the travel experience

Internet helps extend the travel experience because it includes the pre-trip stage, during which people gather information and build their holiday, the on-trip stage, when people use the web to enhance their experience through mobile devices, and the post-trip experience, when people tell their travel story.

I have already described what we do at the pre-trip stage. We also do another thing: we try to figure what people are interested in these days and look for aspects of our territory to satisfy those needs. In this sense I think we also comply with the importance to listen.

But I am not sure we are going all the way for the reasons I mentioned above.

We look into what the territory naturally has to offer; we might try to find ways to make those aspects more prominent but we do not advocate a change that follows the demand of the market, as we see that as a transformation that in the long term will make the territory something it is not.We listen and we try to find ways to respond, whenever possible.

At the post-trip stage we try to keep in touch, we ask our guests to send us photos, write reviews, reports, tell their story, help us provide other travelers with insights into what the area and our properties have to offer. This has proved the most valuable thing over the years: first, it helps us avoid autoreferentiality and second it gives us different points of views on the things we look at every day.

Who knows the tourist potential of an area if not the people who have discovered it as tourists?

We value our guests’ feedback above anything else, and through the years I have to say that they have taught us quite a few things. I have lived here all my life, and now I see my home area with completely different eyes. It is a very interesting exchage.

I have left the on-trip stage for last because this is the most difficult. First, the infrastructure is not ready. Or not always ready. In areas like the Maremma, it is sometimes impossible to get a cell phone signal, never mind 3G coverage. Mobile devices are not a viable option most of the time.We now offer internet access to our guests. We invite them to keep a blog or an online journal while they are vacationing in the area so that others can see what spending some time here means. Not many do that, of course, and rightly so… not everybody is a nerd like us! People have lives! They are probably on holiday to run away from their computers, so we cannot ask them to spend time at their desk when they are on holiday too!!! But we hope to work on this stage with those who will want to participate through a few ideas which we will try and implement as soon as we have time to put online the new websites… the old ones are disgraceful but time is limited…

4. The information gap between travelers and tourism professionals needs to be closed.

Traditionally, those who offered a service had all the information, hence the power. Now travelers have a wealth of resources and information and hence the power. Not sure what we should do here besides helping by adding to that information and becoming ourselves sources of information.

Ideas?

5. The traveler as a “channel”.

Travelers are looking for an experience and not just for objects to look at. They then become the best channel through which the good news about that experience is spread. We know that, we always have. And for this reason we have always tried to offer more than just accommodation in Tuscany, we have always tried to offer an experience into our way of life. And we have always asked people to tell other people about it. The good and the bad. And they have.

I think what I wrote above goes to explain how we treat this aspect too.

Taking a stock

So what is the result of my soul-searching 2.0? I am not sure.

I see large space for improvement in our practice as far as point 3 and the on-trip stage are concerned. I am not sure what to do differently with regards to the other points.

Have we been doing it wrong in the past? Have we always been doing what people are now noticing should have been done and we had no idea we were doing it?

I don’t know. Any ideas, or suggestions, recommendations, etc are more than welcome.

Maybe the reason we found the debate a bit less surprising than we would have hoped for is that we have been working like this for a long time. Ok, maybe  in an naive way, without the capabilities of the marketing professionals, or probably we do this in the wrong way, who knows…

Anyway, if the question is “did internet make your life better and how?” the answer is yes.

We have met an incredible number of great people and we have learnt to look at our home as a destination as well.

It’s a bit like being on vacation all the time.

Related articles

If you are interested in this kind of rumbling and mumbling, you might find the following of some interest:

• ToscanaLab 2010 Unplugged
• Elena Farinelli’s Blog - A summary of the points raised at ToscanaLab 2010 in the Tourism Panel (in Italian)
• BTO Educational – Internet Better Tourism Manifesto (in Italian)

I’d be glad to have other interesting links to add to this list. Please leave a comment (in Italian or English) with a link.

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.