Proximity tourism and green mobility: here's how to be reborn from the ashes of the pandemic.
Il September 27, World Tourism Day, will be the right day to make a serious reflection on an economic sector which, as a whole, represents one of the most important at a global level, not only for its economic value, but also for the social, cultural and political repercussions of the phenomenon and of its contribution to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals identified by the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
A day established way back in 1979 by the UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organisation), which, in the last 10 years, has increasingly oriented itself towards promotion of sustainable tourism.
Rethinking global tourism in a sustainable way
This year's edition will take place in Bali, under the banner of "Rethinking Tourism". At the center of attention, therefore, is the future of the sector and the opportunity to rethink the way we do tourism, therefore shifting the focus to the impacts of the sector on the planet and the opportunities for its sustainable development.
To give you a clearer idea Zurab Pololilkashvili, the Secretary General of the UNWTO, who talks about it like this:
"Rethinking one of the world's major economic sectors won't be easy, but we're already well underway. The crisis has inspired and catalyzed creativity, and the pandemic has accelerated the transformation of work, bringing both challenges and enormous opportunities. We are making significant progress in making tourism a central driver of green, blue and digital economies, ensuring that growth does not come at the expense of people or the planet."
Words that inevitably refer to the main reason why global tourism has fallen into a deep crisis. In the last two years, the impact of the pandemic on the sector it was, in fact, devastating, even more so in a country like Italy, where tourism has always been a driving sector.
Tourism figures in Italy and Lombardy: the slow recovery of the sector
Confirming this trend, the data processed by Polis-Lombardia sui tourist flows in the Region, which show an inevitable minus sign for the items "arrivals" and "attendance". In relation to the two years of pandemic peak, in fact, the year 2020 closed with very high losses compared to 2019 (-66,3% of arrivals and -60,9% of presences), while 2021 saw a recovery compared to 2020 (+51% of arrivals and +59,9% of presences), although remaining clearly below the numbers recorded pre-pandemic in 2019 (-48,9% of arrivals and -37,3% of presences).
A slow recovery trend which also continued in 2022 at a national level with the arrivals of foreigners in Italy more than tripling in the first four months of the year (+216%), but which still remain 36% lower than 2019. (Coldiretti processing, Bankitalia data).
I great absentees on the Italian tourism scene, therefore, during the pandemic, they were precisely foreign tourists, conditioned by the transport sector, severely limited and penalized by the stringent anti-Covid regulations.
With the debacle of air transport and, in part, also of international rail transport, it was certainly the proximity tourism, rediscovered by national tourists, so much so that, in the period August-October 2021, it even exceeded the 2019 data.
Electric car sharing E-VAI makes its way into the green mobility of the future
Precisely thanks to the rediscovery of local tourism, thecars has returned to being a protagonist among mobility alternatives for tourist travel.
It did so, however, by aligning itself more and more with the current trends in society and in road mobility, renewing itself and proposing new ways of using the vehicle, first of all the car sharing and new technologies a lower impact on the environment.
In fact, shared car rental is combined with new ones hybrid and electric engines, becomes a valid green alternative for practicing sustainable forms of tourism in complete safety.
He is aware of it E-VAI, the car sharing service which he uses exclusively 100% electric vehicles and which aims to encourage local tourism, thanks to its widespread diffusion throughout the Lombardy region.
So sustainable mobility is a very useful tool for rethinking tourism from a green perspective, starting precisely from travel within the territory.
E-VAI he is also present with his people E-VAI Point in all Lombardy airports and in numerous railway stations, therefore constituting an intermodal means between air, rail and road transport, to the advantage of the tourism development of the region.
