Wine tourism, pillar of Italian tourism, to be relaunched also with the Recovery Fund

Wine tourism, first as a proximity activity, then going back to intercept the great international flows when the pandemic will be behind us, will be, according to everyone, one of the pillars of Italian tourism, fundamental for the recovery of the wine economy and of the related industries in many Italian territories. But for a real relaunch, as for many other sectors, and in order to develop more and more advanced offers and services that speak to a much wider audience than the circle of wine lovers, ideas and proposals will be decisive, including the use of the “Recovery Fund”. And to make concrete and shared proposals in this sense is the objective of the work table that has united many important representatives of the industry, such as Assoenologi, Città del Vino, Federvini, Movimento Turismo del Vino and Unione Italiana Vini (UIV), and from which was also born the “super” Master of Wine Tourism of the “24Ore Business School”, a project like few others in Italy, under the coordination of the lawyer Marco Giuri from Florence, one of the most important experts of the regulations about wine, and the scientific direction of Donatella Cinelli Colombini, one of the pioneers of wine tourism in Italy.

A master that was born from the sharing in the identification of training needs for the sector, and methods to meet them, because it would be unforgivable for companies, consortia and operators, not to be ready to get on a train not to be missed to go into the future. “The goal is to quickly raise the quality of the tourism offer of wineries and wine territories to transform them into locomotives of development for their companies, their territories and all Italian tourism”, explains project coordinator Marco Giuri, who, for 22 years, has been dealing with wine law and legal advice for wineries throughout Italy, and who, since 2016, has been following the training of the wine sector for the “24Ore Business School”, and, in this capacity, led the Master in Wine Hospitality n. 1, in Florence, in 2019. In 2020, the same lawyer Giuri also started the training for the Consortium of Bolgheri Sassicaia. Experiences that have highlighted the training needs of wine hospitality professionals and of those who are thinking about the wine tourism sector for their future. A sector which has grown in little more than 20 years, involving in Italy, from 25.000 to 30.000 wineries open to the public and at least 200 wine districts with a strong tourist vocation for which specific professional figures do not exist yet. “It is a sector with more than 2.5 billion of business, strategic for our country, especially with the current crisis of tourism caused by covid” explained Giuri underlining that “wine and food is the first attraction towards Italy for foreign travelers and wine places are the only ones immediately ready to turn into destinations”.

To lead the lessons of the Master will be “an interdisciplinary teaching staff of the highest level formed by professionals, academics and experts from business background with the aim of creating managers of tourist wineries and wine destination territories throughout Italy”, explains a note (from Stefano Capurso, dg Dievole, to Gianni Cassetti, CFO of Ambrogio & Giovanni Folonari Tenute, from Enrico Chiavacci, marketing director Marchesi Antinori, to Dominga Cotarella of the Cotarella Family and founder of the Sala Intrecci School of Advanced Training, from Giuseppe Festa, professor of wine business at the University of Salerno, from architect Alessia Garibaldi to Mirko Lalli, founder of Travel Appeal, from Albino Russo, managing director of Ance-Coop to Vincenzo Russo, professor of Consumer Psychology and Neuromarketing at Iulm Milan, from chef Marco Stabile to Senator Dario Stefàno, just to name a few).

The creation of a training project for managers and people working in the sector aimed at quickly raising the national wine tourism offer has moved to the establishment of a steering committee, whose scientific direction has been entrusted to Donatella Cinelli Colombini. The Master, which will start on February 26th in “live streaming”, has therefore precise and wide objectives and intends to pursue them by using a teaching staff of the highest level and at the same time attentive to the daily business life, but also capable of projecting forward the Italian wine tourism offer. A didactic approach that involves very different figures: from the first signatory of the law to the actors who teach body language, to the neuromarketing expert who explains how to stimulate senses other than sight, giving future wine hospitality managers the elements to create the wine experiences required by new visitors to wineries. To frontal lessons are added virtual tours in the most important wineries of the territory. The cut of the courses adheres to the specific characteristics of the didactic offer of the “24Ore Business School”, which, in over 25 years of activity, has trained 25,000 new graduates, managers and professionals, with confirmation rates higher than 95%, thanks to an innovative and differentiated offer by industry and thematic areas.