Trentino. When a local brand becomes a world-famous lifestyle
Europe
Made in Italy
2023 – In recent decades, tourism in Trentino and South Tyrol has experienced strong economic growth and a steady increase in the number of tourists and visitors, thanks to investments and communication campaigns aimed at satisfying the growing need of people to spend not only a holiday in the mountains but above all a unique and fulfilling life experience. How? Immersed in unspoilt nature amidst breathtaking Alpine landscapes, where you can combine sport, wellness, food and wine, shopping, art and culture.
“Breathe, you are in Trentino” and “South Tyrol, a way of life”. These are the slogans that the Provinces of Trento and Bolzano have chosen to promote their territory in recent years, with excellent results in terms of flows, brand reputation and territorial marketing. Even on the Internet, where the success of a “green & healthy” holiday is very popular among users and tour operators, who invade the web with photos and reports of enviable moments or promises of authentic and unforgettable tastes of life, useful for the regeneration of body and mind. The strategies of the world’s major players in the tourism and leisure industry also have their hand in the web, able to condition demand and travel desires, creating new needs and new destinations, presented as exclusive and all to be discovered, such as the lakes, forests and peaks of the borderland between Veneto and Austria.
The growing success of the tourist industry has also had side effects, such as the concentration of visitors in a few places and at certain times of the year (Christmas and winter ski holidays, Easter, spring and summer), the consumption – if not outright exploitation — of land and the environment to build efficient and increasingly welcoming facilities and infrastructure, a noisy form of tourism that has little awareness of, or respect for, the tranquillity and times of the mountains, and that is increasingly unpopular with local people, who are concerned — even online — about the future of their land and their quality of life.
Between May and June 2023, we questioned the network in Italian and English, collecting languages, images, information, and the public’s expectations of Trentino to identify current trends and outline possible new strategies for revitalising its territories and developing fairer and more ethical tourism, based on the communication of a brand that has now become global.
We synthesized the main findings in this report.
