“The tourism data analysts who verify and process the figures of arrivals and presences tend to focus on the comparison between the first months of 2024, the data now acquired for 2023 and those recorded in 2019, to understand whether or not there is an increase of flows in the post-pandemic era“. Speaking on the topic is Claudio Fochi, member of the 5 Star Movement list in support of Fabio Anselmo.
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The candidate for municipal councilor underlined that “since foreign tourism is on average attributed a greater spending capacity, it is not surprising that particular attention is paid to it. If in 2023 tourism holds up well on the coast (Comacchio with its beaches shows an increase of 4 .5% compared to 2019), the same cannot be found in the city of Este. The presence of foreign tourists in Ferrara in 2023, despite having exceeded the numbers of 2022, is very distant from the pre-covid flows, with a minus 26% of tourists in the first nine months, in contrast with other centers in our region (for example Modena , which boasts 5.6% more foreign tourism)”.
Fochi remarked that “Ferrara doesn’t break through on the international market because it doesn’t have a brand, it doesn’t have a international brand that refers to an identity easily recognizable cultural or productive, capable of breaking into the international market such as the Renaissance in Florence, the Palio in Siena, the mosaics in Ravenna, the University, the gastronomy and the two towers in Bologna, the ceramics in Faenza, the Arena and Romeo and Juliet in Verona, the Food-Valley and Motor-Valley in Modena, just to mention relatively close realities”.
The five-star exponent added that “in the USA, for the average tourist, Ferrara is a sweets factory (Ferrara Candy Company of Chicago) unless they have seen the film ‘The Garden of the Finzi Contini’ or have not read important recent articles like the one that appeared in the New York Times in April 2019 on Meis and the Jewish community of Ferrara, which has created a small flow of tourists interested in Judaism, there are alternatives, the only possibility is to promote withTargeted investments on greater indexations online, a brand from our city that does not compete or is confused with stronger neighboring brands. Focus on Ferrara, city of the Renaissance, but combined with the ‘cultural landscape’ of its Delta, as can be read in the reasons that recognize it as a UNESCO city, anthropized by the Estensi Delights, also enhancing its waterways and sustainable cycle tourism proposals”.
Hence the hope of “investing much more incisively in the presence of our city’s tourist assets in the major international tourism stock exchanges, such as the ITB in Berlin, the Imex in Frankfurt, the Bite in Beijing, the WTM in London, the Iltm of Dubai, otherwise we will continue to meet foreign tourists who exchange Maranello for Ferrara and look for the white marble that Michelangelo sculpted in the homeland of clay recipients of our proposals we include the Inferrara consortium, the only municipal body responsible for carrying out the tourism promotion of our territory, in Italy and abroad”.
