The meeting was held today in the Aula Magna of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart – Cremona Campus. “Cultural heritage and territory. Cremona: the journey of a city and the challenges of contemporaneity”a seminar organized as part of the Plan to Safeguard Traditional Cremonese Violin Making Know-how, which since 2012 has been registered as part of UNESCO’s intangible heritage of humanity.
After the institutional greetings, with a video speech by Magda Landry, director of the UNESCO Office for Science and Culture in Europe, who underlined how fundamental the role of the Safeguard Plan and of heritage communities is in keeping intangible heritage alive, and an intervention by the Municipality of Cremona, participated in the seminar international guests, linked to the UNESCO dimension of the valorization and transmission of heritage, teachers and professionals, invited to describe values and research itineraries between immaterial, contemporary, cultures and development policies; Stefano Salis of Sole 24 Ore introduced and coordinated the dialogue.
The meeting highlighted the fundamental assets for building a sustainable future that manages to bring art, history, tourism and craftsmanship into dialogue, with a view to continuing relationships and comparisons, also from a supra-local and international perspective. The reflection began by highlighting the importance of the history of violin making to understand the present of the city, starting from community, identity and protection; it was then the turn of Liborio Stellino, Permanent Representative of Italy to UNESCO, to put the fundamental and universal role of cultural heritage at the centre, calling populations to play an active role in recognizing the values of cultural heritage: “The intangible cultural heritage of humanity is also confirmed today as a privileged vehicle of both identity and cohesion social, as well as a natural inclination towards sharing and dialogue, values that are increasingly urgent in an era of worryingly increasing tensions and conflicts. It is therefore a reason for pride and hope to be in Cremona today to witness the renewed and active commitment of a community and a territory for the protection, promotion and transmission to future generations of such a unique heritage, appreciated throughout the world and representative of Italian excellence”. In the front row the regional councilor Barbara Mazzali.
Pier Luigi Sacco, Full Professor of Cultural Economics at the University of Chieti – Pescara, illustrated the evolution of cultural districts in the face of challenges
contemporary; intervention in close connection with that of professor of Italian and comparative ecclesiastical law Anna Gianfredawhich focused on religious journeys
as territorial development, an interesting example of immaterial tourism. Followed by Professor Paolo Rizzi, of Applied Economics and Territorial Marketing, who for years
operates in the fields of local development and territorial policies, social economy and tourism; his speech highlighted the salient stages of the transformation of the city of Cremona also as a destination for travelers attracted by music, violin making and culture. Closing the dialogue was Noemi Satta, cultural innovation expert and strategic manager, which placed emphasis on the relational dimension of the Cremona “laboratory”, where knowledge and cultures meet for the creation of cohesive and development policies. Thus continues the process of rewriting the future of Cremona with a far-sighted, innovative and inclusive vision. International capital of violin making for five centuries, today the city presents itself as an excellent example of synergy between cultural heritage, craftsmanship, art and tourism, capable of investing in its community of violin makers and the quality of their knowledge.
For some time, in fact, the main Cremonese players have focused on culture as an opportunity to build social bonds and to think about a new type of development, more harmonious, richer, and in particular the work of recent years has been that of building of a city ecosystem that focuses on researchon training, on the meeting between luthier and research laboratories, on the valorisation of the heritage of knowledge and culture as an opportunity for growth for artisan artists and for all those with whom Cremona builds relationships.
DATA ON TOURISM
The Tourism Observatory of the Municipality of Cremona, managed by the Tourism Service and the Local Economic Laboratory of the Catholic University of Piacenza, releases the second analysis of the data taken from the two platforms at its disposal: H-benchmark, the platform that detects bookings in hotel accommodation facilities and Data Apeal, the platform that detects the conversations published online by visitors to the city and the bookings of OTAs (Online Travel Agencies – e.g. Booking.com and Airbnb), which mainly concern the non-hotel accommodation offer ( B&B, tourist accommodation, holiday homes).
From a comparison of overnight stays in the first quarter of 2024 with the same period of 2023 a +14% is recorded with an increase above all in the leisure segment, visitors who stay in the city for tourist reasons. The increase of overnight stays is even more pronounced, rising to +26% if you consider the hotel facilities only which currently represent 40% of the beds available in the city. From monitoring the digital traces relating to the comments that visitors leave on the web, it appears that the 45% belong to foreign visitorsmarking an increase of 6.2% compared to the previous 6 months.
The most reviewed points of interest remain the most significant attractions of our city: in the lead the Violin Museum, followed by the Cathedral, Teatro Ponchielli, Torrazzo and Palazzo Guazzoni, to name the points of interest that exceed 100 reviews, all with a sentiment well over 90% testifying that the tourist lives
a more than positive experience in the city. The average stay, on the sample of accommodation facilities analysed, is stable at three nights and there is a decidedly high increase in the non-hotel sector which includes non-entrepreneurially managed tourist accommodation: +45% (from 96 structures we went to the current 131 in a few months). This demonstrates how the increase in supply is adapting to the increase in tourist demand.
Moving on to the forecasts for future months, it is noted that hotel room bookings for the four-month period May-August 2024 are 12% higher than the same period last year and that demand is more stable, showing fewer negative peaks. This shows that the destination suffers less and less from low season periods. Today I am over 56% of the hotel beds available for 2024 have already been sold or optioned, approximately +5% compared to the same observation day in 2023.
This data is positive and underestimated compared to what the 2024 final balance could be, as a large part of the bookings will take place over the next few months. Important peaks are highlighted, especially in the presence of business and cultural events; in particular, 29% more hotel rooms have already been booked for the month of July compared to 2023.
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