By Stefano Bosco
Roberta Garibaldi is one of the most important experts in food and wine tourism, member of the research board and ambassador for Italy of World Food Travel Association and on the Board of World Gastronomy Institute. Coordinator of the report on Italian food and wine tourism is also one of the speakers of the Festival of Food Journalism.
We asked Roberta Garibaldi, in this phase of emergency and in continuous evolution, how realities must behave food & wine to revive and attract tourism to their destinations.
In your opinion, how should food and wine companies behave in a perspective of restarting and relaunching tourism?
«What we are experiencing is undoubtedly a zero year and at present it is not easy to even foresee its evolution and conclusion. I believe that, with a view to restarting, food & wine companies should take advantage of this period to carry out planning and analysis work, to relaunch and reorganize their offer. They must focus, in particular, on the coming summer months, thinking about a completely different situation compared to past years.
I believe that, with due care, the food and wine tourism, as well as rural tourism, are in fact among the areas that will work well. It will certainly be a proximity tourism and therefore mainly Italian with some hope, especially for the realities of northern Italy, of any tourist exchanges with neighboring and neighboring countries. It will certainly be important to promote travel to Italy to bring wealth to our country.
What can be the tools to adopt?
«As I said, we have to revise them a little experience in an innovative and imaginative way, correctly exploiting new technologies. For a certain period the problem of "keeping distance" will remain and therefore places with open spaces, in the mountains or in rural areas, will certainly be more facilitated. Equally, priority must be given to individual tours over group tours, which will necessarily be revised. So why not study, for example, supports to promote autonomous paths?
I think of the Chiarlo winery, which organizes individual itineraries in the vineyards with works of art. Or the Maison of Champagne Pommery who developed an app to visit their underground galleries. It will be necessary to study alternative ways, but no less interesting and creative, such as picnics in the vineyards divided into groups or artistic or sporting activities which naturally also include the food and wine aspect.
Equally there are many other technologies to be implemented to encourage digital tastings, to make the experience live outside the cellar and the place of production. I think of guided tastings through smart speakers like Alexa, or ai qrcode present on the labels of wine bottles or in gastronomic products that refer to the videos on the company website. And, again, the living labels and chatbots. These are all narrative initiatives that exploit virtual reality to offer tastings and that may have their support value even in the future, when we return to normal ».
What are the best communication choices for food and wine companies that do not want to lose tourist quotas?
«In this ever-changing period, where information and consequently the perception of the situation and the future change from week to week if not even day to day, it is difficult to know what the correct behavior is. After a first phase in which it was necessary to stop and it would have been out of place to propose tourism communications related to food and wine, I think at this moment people want to dream, to restart their heads and to relive the beautiful past experiences in food & wine with the intention of returning. This is why I think it's time for an experiential communication. Companies can thus create a communication channel with their customers, asking them to remember past experiences and strengthen bonds. For example, creating a sort of "wine club" or proposing purchases of food and wine products including, in the package, new experiences that can be enjoyed at a later time ».
And the media that deal with the sector?
«Equally also the media that deal with food and wine tourism can offer beautiful stories to make their readers dream. And, in the future, when you can return to travel even if with due caution and restrictions, set up your information by presenting those realities that allow proximity tourism and in total safety ».
What initiatives are you carrying out to support food & wine companies?
«In this period I am carrying out the Dialogues on food and wine tourism. A set of webinars on the subject to virtually meet producers and enthusiasts and to keep the flows of information and ideas open, even from a distance, by exchanging opinions and best practices. I consider it an opportunity for proactively live this situation, plan the future and stay updated, to train, get rich and find new ideas and stimuli. We can all make an investment, capitalizing on our time to transform ideas into moments of growth and deepening. Then I have another project in the pipeline aimed at helping food & wine companies in a concrete and constructive way to design new services and processes and reorganize experiences ».
