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Tourism and development of the town of Turin

Domenico CARPANINI - Deputy Mayor of Turin, Italy

 

    

First of all, I should like to thank you for having given me a chance to illustrate here our tourist development project for the city of Turin. Turin is not a mountain resort. We have no ski slopes or theme parks. We are a new potential tourist destination, fuelled by our own resources, that exploits the latest market trends to the full.

I need not explain leisure society trends here because the members of the audience know them much better than I do, but there is no doubt that tourism is the industry of the 21st century and Turin, once the industrial capital of Italy, cannot, nor wants, to be left out of this new industry market.

Turin wishes to become a city holiday-city break destination that exploits urban resources to the full.

Unfortunately, Turin is not traditionally a city that has ever invested much in tourism. For over a century, it has been just a large industrial city. Only in recent years, after all the limits of such a "single-culture" identity were realised, has it begun investing in tourism.

Turin has now definitely taken its strategic decision to become a tourist destination, differentiating its range of products in order to launch onto new tourist and business markets.

In particular, Turin intends closely focusing on congress tourism and city breaks, thereby spreading current flows, which are very much concentrated on business tourism, throughout the whole year.

Our city tourism products centre on culture, city sights, wine and food and entertainment.

European market trends have undergone big changes. There has been a switch from passive tourism - travelling to a destination, visiting it and taking photos, without however really experiencing and feeling the city - to active tourism - participating, enjoying the traditional cuisine, walking, mixing in with the locals and really becoming acquainted with the place.

In this framework, sustainable growth is not only compatible with our plan to make Turin a tourist destination, it is also a crucial factor behind such growth. Safeguarding the environment, protecting the countryside, green areas, rivers, cultural and architectural assets, reducing atmospheric pollution and upgrading the quality of food represent important investments not only to make the city more liveable for its inhabitants, but also to make it more attractive for visitors.

Over the last few years, strong investments have been made in promoting the city as a tourist destination. Such promotion has been entrusted by the Municipal Authorities to a special Agency called - "Turismo Torino" - established jointly by the Provincial Authorities and other state and private Bodies.

Such promotion has been implemented on a national and European scale, with special focus on the area within a radius of 500 kilometres from the city likely to provide the largest number of city-break visitors. Great attention has been given to both individual tourists and tour operators.

Our aim is to up the number of visitors from the current 1.5 million/year to 3 million by 2006, the year Turin and the mountains of its Province will be hosting the 20th Winter Olympics.

We expect this event to give a strong boost to the promotion of our City and also to the awareness our fellow inhabitants have of the tourist potential and appeal of Turin.

Sustainable growth is again one of our majors concerns so far as the 2006 Winter Olympics are concerned. The issue becomes even more crucial when it comes to building large sports facilities and a part of these are located in mountain areas. We shall do all we possibly can to ensure such facilities are environment-friendly and that after the event they can be used again for sports gatherings or other purposes.

The Winter Olympics also represent an excellent chance to upgrade hotel accommodation in Turin in terms of both quantity and quality. The forecast is that 5,000 extra rooms will be needed in the Turin area alone (without taking into account those required in the Alpine valleys involved in the Games). We consider that 3,000 of these should then go to satisfy the City's "normal" hospitality requirements, as long as, between now and then, strong promotional measures have been implemented. 2,000 rooms are expected to be reconverted for other uses (students' lodgings, etc.).

The Olympic Games are sure to have very positive repercussions and it is also very important that we adequately assess the number of hotel rooms the market is likely to need. The example is that of Albertville, where a number of hotels had to be closed after the Olympic Games because the 800,000 rooms sold in 1993 dropped to 100,000 in 1999.

Adequate promotion before the Olympic Games are staged is a lesson learnt from Barcelona '92. Atlanta and Sydney also avoided a fall in their occupancy rate by increasing their accommodation capacity. Sydney increased its accommodation capacity by 25 %, with an envisaged 65-70 % hotel occupancy rate and with a slight 5 % drop forecast for the current year.

As case studies, Barcelona and Atlanta are more similar to Turin than Albertville and Lillehammer, because they too are business cities. In these cities, after the Olympic Games, many small tour operators increased their business by including these destinations on their programmes.

The same thing happened in the case of business tourism. Many international companies decided to organise their conferences in these cities attracted by the renown they had acquired after the Olympic Games.

We feel sure this "Summit" and the cooperation between our cities will provide a major contribution and ideas to help us in the demanding and exciting task of transforming a city known only for its industries into a successful tourist destination.