When I was growing up, I noticed people around me all doing the same thing, buying the same brands, wearing the same clothes and accessories because someone, somewhere had decided that those brands were “cool” and part of some TREND. Well, I have to tell you, I wasn’t having any of that and I found that my natural instincts were to go against the trend. Not because I didn’t want to wear those brands, but because I wanted to simply be myself and not be lumped in with the masses. Even at an early age, I realized that I wanted to stand out from the crowd rather than be a part of it.
When the covid-19 pandemic began we were intensely focused on the health of our traveling clients and our See Italy family and associates. After a bit, we began working on planning what we were going to do when the pandemic ends. We decided to continue to focus on our foundation which is experiential travel to lesser-known Italian destinations. That is our “bread and butter” and it is what we’ve done since the 1st day I created this company nearly 10 years ago. It is truly in our DNA.
So, you can imagine how surprised and “happy” I am at this moment when I find that See Italy Travel is leading the TREND that contains the following keywords; authenticity, local, organically, real, identity, and Italian travel. It’s not that we aren’t experts at providing clients with exceptional, life-changing experiences involving those keywords. We are indeed THE experts! The problem I have is that someone somewhere has decided that they are going to artificially CREATE a TREND through MARKETING.
I knew that people were going to have a hard time surviving after covid-19, I just didn't know that to survive you had to "pretend" you had the product everybody was going to talk about. This way of creating a "following" is called mass-marketing!! Let's create a demand and then find and mass-produce a product to satisfy the demand we created. Let me tell you, experiential tourism doesn’t work that way.
How can companies create something that they don't know anything about? They will create products for demands without knowing what the demands need to be satisfied. These businesses are not going to survive. That is a sad fact, but what’s worse is the damage that they will do to the experiential tourism segment as they fail.
So, when this type of tourism started trending, it confirmed to me that we ARE the TREND. See Italy was born providing local, authentically, organically conceived kind of travel. We’ve had some of our human resources since 2011 and have been developing and strengthening our relationships and network since our 1st day in business. Our resources and guides already have the historical elements, artistic and cultural profiles intertwined with local components. They know the places and we personally know each of them. We don’t just have their names and numbers in our contact list, we know them, have long standing relationships with them, and happily call them friends.
In the areas where our guides reside, they are known as the premium resources of the territory and are highly sought after. They are the perfect conduit to help our clients experience the authenticity of local Italian traditions and history because they have chosen to stay in the villages that they share with our guests and because they love the territory themselves.
But that is just an introduction to what experiential tourism really is.
Website: www.theholidayandtravelmagazine.blogspot.com.au
See Italy Travel*Written by Laura Massoni
Website: seeitalytravel.com/
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