It is called “Support Tourism“, the initiative that our association is promoting to relaunch one of the sectors most damaged by the Covid-19 emergency, namely tourism.
The link between over 250 companies in the tourism sector and Assoprovider is historic: it is thanks to the work of our providers that some of the main online booking engines for Italian tourism have been created.
A “connection” from which a branch of the association was born, vertical on tourism, led by Matteo Fici, one of the founders of Assoprovider and member of the board of directors.
It was from Matteo Fici, with the participation of another of our councillors, Antonio Aprea, and Giusi Carioto, an expert in experiential tourism, that “Sostieni il Turismo” was born, involving around 80,000 tourism businesses, which were asked to draw up a series of proposals to relaunch the sector.
21 proposals were born, that we partially describe in this article and that have already found room in national newspapers such as “Affari Italiani” and vertical tourism magazines like “Daily Travel”.
Tourism relaunch: proposals for the first phase
For the first phase, the tourism businesses involved in the initiative have launched a package of concrete proposals: from the emergency fund (with an endowment of 7.5 billion), to zero-interest loans, the extension of income support until December 2020, to VAT at 10% for agencies, and the reduction of the flat rate tax to 10% for the short-term rental sector.
“As is well known, the Covid 19 emergency has brought tourism to its knees. Instead of giving up and waiting for proposals, we brought together about 80,000 tourism businesses throughout Italy and launched a social campaign, collecting proposals in a video viewed more than 70,000 times, which was sent to Italian and European parliamentarians and the Italian government,” reveal Matteo Fici and Antonio Aprea, talking about the objectives and the first results achieved by the initiative.
Tourism relaunch: proposals for the second phase
The tour operators involved then thought about useful proposals for a second phase of relaunch.
In this context, funding for the development of Italian and/or European booking platforms, investments in digital training of tourism staff, and funding for territorial marketing become decisive:
“The approach we have adopted is systemic, with interventions that act on several fronts: on ‘people’ and on social and environmental capital, through professional retraining towards new models of modern tourism such as experiential and eco-sustainable tourism, that will be more suited to the post covid 19 climate ”, conclude Matteo Fici and Antonio Aprea.