Transcript with Show Notes Embedded:
Alessandra Priante: The Winter Olympics are right there in the North, Milan Cortina, but it’s not just going to be it. There’s going to be Olympics, Paralympics, so there’s going to be a lot of buzz, a lot of attention. So I do hope that all these part of Italy is going to be explored in detail. There are rising stars, but let me tell you what I’m expecting is going to grow.
Kathy McCabe: I’m listening. This is Kathy McCabe. Welcome to the Dream of Italy podcast. You know me from the PBS Travel Series, Dream of Italy and the award-winning website and publication. Join me as we explore the sights and sounds of Bella Italia, from the canals of Venice to the Piazzas of Puglia, from the fashion houses of Milan to the vineyards of Tuscany. Hop on. It’s going to be a great ride. Andiamo!
Here we are back with the Dream of Italy podcast and I have a very special guest today, the woman behind the modern Italian tourism basically. And the moment that Italy is having, which none of us can deny, I am here with the president of ENIT, which is the Italian National Tourism Board, Alessandra Priante. She is a powerhouse. Welcome, Alessandra.
[01:23]
Alessandra: Thank you so much, Kathy. Oh my God, what a welcome. I feel you make me blush. I don’t think I’m that much, but thank you for your definitely recognition of all the energy that me and all my team and all the people that working in it and beyond are putting into this.
Kathy: Well, I love strong women and strong women get things done and certainly Italian women, I’m half Italian. We have a certain strength. So, tell me about your career to start with that. Your job has been promoting Italy to the world and we’ve seen in these past few years, it’s like it can’t even get bigger and more popular and it does. How has your job evolved over the past years?
Alessandra: Well, you know, before this I am new to the job because I come straight from the United Nations and before that I was on the other side. I was in the ministry, so I was the one controlling the work of the agency that promoted Italy abroad and ENIT, which has the same name. That is really sometimes difficult to explain because it is an old acronym-
Kathy: yes. What does it stand for?
Alessandra: Ente Nazionale Italiano Turismo. So it’s like, it was created as you know in 1919, it’s over 100 years old. So there’s a very strong tradition there, a lot of actions that were taking place before. What is interesting as a challenge now is that we are technically an in-house of the Ministry of Tourism. So a lot of changes governance happened in the last few years because in 2022, actually 2021, they created the Ministry of Tourism out of, in a non-existing entity because it was already abrogated in 1973 with a referendum. So they removed Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Tourism in Italy. So it was recreated, given a portfolio and clearly getting the portfolio they needed to have a line of activities. And the only entity that was actually doing tourism per se was ENIT. So it was a very large fat juicy ENIT that clearly in order to make the ministry happen, needed to shrink a little and adjust.
So in the beginning it was sort of kept like that. But then this minister, this government really wanted to give tourism a governance that would allow that private public collaboration, that public collaboration on a vertical element. And so they sort of made the change. There was a Ministry of Tourism and there was ENIT, who then became a company of the ministry. So we are the ones who actually execute the strategic lines of the ministry of the government. And clearly we have a very specific mandate, but we can also, we are very elastic. We can also enlarge. So how did my career adjust? Well, I went from national to multilateral, which I absolutely adored.
Kathy: Yeah.
[04:41]
Alessandra: There was this moment where politically there’s the call, that sometimes you say yes, you say no. And I was completely crazy, I have to tell you this, but I was very flattered when my government asked me to come and fill a gap. Because they were looking for the right name for some time, and the names that were chosen were not really, were annoying the industry a little bit. It was a nervous moment, we’re coming out of COVID and stuff. So they needed an international moment, they needed an international scientifically recognized, reputation wise figure who could put everybody in agreement and just start away. So I like to think that I’ve initiated a little bit of a revolution. I brought the Alessandra touch, which is the, I would say a little bit of the libra attitude of creating diplomacy, not liking conflict, trying to put people together and kindness, right? Gratitude, smiles in a work and in an environment which is Italy, which I have to be honest is not really used to that. I have a very Anglo-Saxon approach.
Kathy: Why is that?
Alessandra: Well, because I’ve always worked with, I mean besides living in America, I mean you are half Italian. I would say I’m half American, even though I haven’t lived enough in the States yet, I might return, who knows, to say I’m half half. But, you know, I always kept this American or Anglo-Saxon attitude and ethics related to work. I say please, I say thank you. I am always kind. I give a lot of attention and importance to the people that work. I tend to always delegate, empower. So I have a completely different approach. And I think this was a little bit unsettling for people that are in a top position because they’re used to something different. So when you’re like this, they either take you for “Ah, she’s too easy because she doesn’t have an attitude.” or they really appreciate it. And what is happening right now is I think I managed to change the way of many people, so many people now actually-
Kathy: The culture.
Alessandra: Yes.
Kathy: The working culture.
Alessandra: They feel more comfortable with being kind, for being happy with working with one another. And I like to think that I was a little part of this, a little drop in the ocean of this change. Now Italy I think is number one for one reason. Because first of all, we recognized how important tourism is for everybody. So we respect the sector of tourism instead of, I know tourism or tourism is ancillary or “Oh my God, there’s a list of priorities. Tourism is the last of it because we take it for granted. It happens anyways even if we don’t do anything.”
Kathy: And I think that was the attitude for a lot of years, right? Years and years ago when I first started just, oh, they’re going to come to Italy anyway.
[08:02]
Alessandra: Yeah. And because of this, the attitude was, yeah, when people were saying “Hey, slightly too many people, hey, there’s a little bit of congestion.” And people were like “Yeah, yeah, but you’re happy. No, you’re making money now.” Now people are understanding that when you have a management, when you have a plan, and it’s mostly… Sorry about this.
Kathy: Who is this?
Alessandra: This is Dave. This is one of my two poodles. Hello, Dave. Say hello.
Kathy: Dave is a good looking boy. Ciao Dave.
Alessandra: Hi Dave.
Kathy: Buonasera. Oh my God, I love him. I love him.
Alessandra: Sorry for that.
Kathy: No, my great. I took my dog to Italy, my late dog, twice, and I swear it gave him six more months on earth. That’s a whole campaign we can do. The dogs, taking your dog to Italy, but-
Alessandra: Oh, I have the best of pictures of Dave traveling with me. And even they love traveling in the car. They don’t like the plane so much. I think they would like private jet, I’m not sure that-
[09:05]
Kathy: You know that there are now these jets, one’s called Canine Jets. There are these private jets that people pay about $8,000 to fly their dog. It’s a group of dogs and owners.
Alessandra: Really?
Kathy: And, yes! I will send you some links to that because it’s a great initiative. And it’s people who are either very wealthy or if they’re moving to Italy, they pay that one time. And I think even in these past few years, traveling with your dog is a big sector. You see people traveling all the time. And unlike in the U.S. at the rest stops, at the autogrills you can bring the dog in, which makes it so much easier. You can take them to the restaurants, right? And in the shops.
Alessandra: Funny enough, Europe is not, I think in Italy we are very, very good with dogs and in general we’re traveling with animals. I don’t think that we, I mean the rest of Europe is so much aligned. I mean I’ve had experiences in other countries where you really feel angry to the point where you’re saying “You know what? I don’t like you. I’m not going to come back. And let’s go back to Italy then.” So we learned the power of working together. We learned how profitable it is to actually work well together. Maybe give up a little bit of space of your space to collaborate with your neighbor, with the neighboring region, with the neighboring city, to be able to create such lovely experiences that make everybody profit. So when regions understand, for example, that if it’s a long haul traveler, you cannot tell them to “come to the village which is on the left of…, and don’t go to the other one because…”. No, because when somebody comes, first of all, long haul, we are just a step in a European travel. So they might land in Paris, come to us, go to Switzerland, go to Hungary and, talking specific Chinese, or to Spain or whatever it is, and that would be their European trip. So we are part of a list. If we’re lucky enough that they come to Italy, then yes, you can play. But at that point you have to collaborate. So once again, now that we’re working together, now that people are actually seeing that ENIT is an asset, they feel reassured by the fact that everybody around understand what the needs are. There’s a different feeling, a different spirit. Clearly you will always find the Italian complainer because that is in the DNA values.
Kathy: I do love them, but I also do understand them. That-
Alessandra: You agree with me, right? I mean we have to be aware.
Kathy: Oh, I have-
Alessandra: We love to complain!
[11:47]
Kathy: I have a friend and we went out to dinner, I swear, maybe a year ago and he is still talking about some problem with the food. The food’s a whole other story. But it was lovely. To me it was lovely. It didn’t haunt me. But they do love to complain. There is this image that people have of Italians from the movies and they are the warmest people, but they have their flaws, which are very funny sometimes too.
Alessandra: Kathy, you know what I do? And I think this is also because, I mean, I’m a professor at uni, so I love teaching and training, especially younger generations and try to give them hope, right? Try to put them in a good mood. The one thing that I spend most of my time doing is saying back to the positive wave, I say, thank you. I say to people “Stop. Recognize how great you are. Stop complaining that we didn’t do enough. Yes, nobody’s perfect, but first of all, you make mistakes when you work. So bravo, you’ve done a great job.” Second, we’re doing beautiful. I mean, look at what other people are doing. They’re looking at us with, oh, I wish I was Italy.
[13:07]
Kathy: I know, they really care for this! Because you’re also like, you’re a place. When we were talking long haul, I think with Americans though, many go to Italy and Italy alone. Yes, they do the multi, but I think that’s a particular thing from Americans and the repetition of Americans is what countries would kill for. That they come back. They’re not just coming once.
Alessandra: I fully agree, I fully agree. I fully agree. And the Americans as well, they want to continue coming to Italy. They go everywhere. They want to come any time of the year. Italy is sort of like their go-to place. It’s like “Have you gone to Italy? No? Go!” And funny enough, I like to be sort of the mystery guest, right? Whenever I’m traveling and trust me, I travel a lot. I’m sitting…
Kathy: I see you, I can’t keep up. I see your social media!
Alessandra: Right? So it’s like a diary, travel diary. So I sit next to people on planes, on trains, and I like to chitchat. And especially if I realized the tourist “How are you? Blah blah.” I would kick up. My mom used to say that I can talk to stones, right?
[14:26]
Kathy: That was my mother. And people would tell my mother everything about their lives.
Alessandra: Exactly. Bless her. Wherever she is looking at us.
Kathy: She’s, I always say she’s in Tahiti, but she’s around.
Alessandra: I’m sure she is. She’s in Tahiti.
Kathy: Looks like, I think we talked about this. I get signs from my mother. So she would love you. She would love you because she was a powerhouse herself. But when you talk to these tourists, what do they say?
Alessandra: Well, first of all, I always like to, I have my marketing segmentation as like, okay, single traveler or friends traveler, 65. So I ask a lot of demographics even if they don’t understand. So I’m going to give you an example. I am sitting next to this lady, she clearly came with another lady, retiree. You could see that they were not young flowers.
Kathy: Sure.
Alessandra: But they were very organized, completely all set with her backpack and independent, autonomous, and they were sitting in different seats. So I offered, I said “Would you like me to swap seats with your friend?” She just like “No, no, it’s fine. Because whenever we travel, we use this time on the plane. Each one does its own thing. So it doesn’t matter.”
Kathy: I like that. I like that.
Alessandra: “I read, I watch my stuff. She does the same. So it’s fine. We’re always together. Don’t worry.” I’m like, “Ah, wow, you’re sisters?” And then it started like this. Now I was investigating. So they were best friends, I guess 67, retirees who once a year promised to themselves, they all have families and stuff, they would take a month off and travel to one of their destination bucket list. So they were coming all the way from Australia.
Kathy: Oh, that’s a big trip.
Alessandra: It is. And they went to, their destinations were Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Nordic. And I actually met them on the Iceland-Rome flight. Dave is in alert. I think Dave wants to see the-
Kathy: Hi Dave!
Alessandra: …the northern lights? You want to see the northern lights? Wait, let me send you. Sorry, Kathy.
Kathy: Northern lights, my God, yes.
[16:42]
Alessandra: Oh my God, I was so unlucky. I went to Iceland four days, not even one. Whatever. I need to go back. So I was asking and then like “Ah. And now you’re coming to Rome. You’re going to enjoy Rome.” I was ready to give my full list of what to do in Rome, right? She’s like “Ah, no, no, no. We just stopping by Rome. We’re going to Sicily for a week.” “Oh wow, that’s cool. So you’re going to Sicily in the end of November. That’s very clever.” And they had a detailed plan done. It was fantastic. And I’m thinking, you see, you know how great is this? And the only country in the world where you can actually do that, even plan your trip in detail and make up some stories. You don’t even need an organized tour. You can do it yourself. Is Italy.
Kathy: Yes!
Alessandra: Is Italy.
[17:34]
Kathy: The thing that happens in Italy is, I say serendipity happens in Italy. You get to where you’re going and something magical happens. You meet somebody or they invite you to lunch or you go down a different road and there’s some vineyard. It’s never quite what you expect. I think that’s this special sauce of Italy and what you said about, so that’s interesting. Do you feel like these travelers are becoming more and more comfortable with off season, which isn’t really off season anymore and going to places that people weren’t going 20, 30 years ago?
Alessandra: Absolutely. And Kathy, let me tell you, I think in general, traveling has changed.
Kathy: How?
Alessandra: Well, first of all, numbers don’t matter anymore. I don’t get very excited when I see the numbers.
Kathy: Ok.
[18:33]
Alessandra: And so for example, there was this publication for MU and tourism, the last 50 years of tourism. Yeah, I mean it’s interesting, but it’s not really the numbers. First of all, the numbers are relevant. The numbers are what we tell them the numbers are. And in Italy, as you know very well, numbers can be tricky, right?
Kathy: I love how honest you are, yes.
Alessandra: Yes. Yeah, because each region said, I mean, we try-
Kathy: Everyone, they count it a different way. Yes.
Alessandra: Depending on what’s your purpose. But nevertheless, you now have data, whatever you try to say, then there’s data. You got big data, you got things that are unequivocable that you cannot change. It’s right there in your face. I personally think Italy is always been number one, simply didn’t want to say it. How many people are in Rome? Really a million? Might be a million and a half. So let’s think about everything. So numbers for me don’t really matter. How to travel change? First of all, we travel for motivation. I always repeat this and I try to explain the concept. Take the Taylor Swift economy. There are people that are going, entire families that are going to a destination like, I don’t know, Albania or Montenegro, or even small islands in the middle of the Mediterranean or Madrid or Lisbon in a specific time. Why? Because there’s a Taylor Swift concert. There’s… right? Or there’s a super match, football match. What I’m saying is that people-
Kathy: F1, I think for Bruce Springsteen.
[20:14]
Alessandra: There you go. My secretary today told me, “I’m taking a day off tomorrow. We’re going to Torino.” That’s great because the daughter wanted to go and see the Egyptian museum. So not destination, motivation. So they didn’t say, let’s go to Torino, and then when we do-
Kathy: In general, they had a reason.
Alessandra: And the motivation to travel is…
Kathy: Motivation. Okay.
Alessandra: Is what builds the travel itself. The second thing is now people want to travel whenever they want to travel. So they want to travel for example, I don’t know, the thing of I need to travel in this specific time because of course everybody…
Kathy: It’s dying. It’s almost dead.
Alessandra: But it’s almost dead. It doesn’t matter anymore. If you’re going on holiday in August, Rome is rather full in August, which is really weird. It wasn’t like this a while ago. And I take Rome as a reference because Rome is the typical public sector driven city where you have the civil servants or the civil servant normally has this amount of holiday. But they organize themselves. And so they might go definitely, they use what we call the ponte. So when there’s , now there was the eight of December.
Kathy: The Holidays. Yes.
Alessandra: Right.
Kathy:You have some good pontes in Italy. We don’t have so many. But yes, we use them. We use them.
[21:42]
Alessandra: You know who has the best pontes ever?
Kathy: Tell Me. Tell me.
Alessandra: Spaniards. They have, you would go to Spain and then all of a sudden everything is shot and you’re like, why? Because this is the San I dont’ know what. And I love that because they have a great, great balance work life, and they’re the happiest people in the world after the Finns or whatever. I don’t know how the Finns are the happiest, but I’m sure they are.
Kathy: I question that one too, but let’s see.
Alessandra: No, but they are, trust me, they are. I love the Finns. I don’t know. It must be like this, if people say it has to.
Kathy: Well, I wonder reporting of statistics, which we just talked about, are they over-reporting their happiness? I don’t know, but I think, okay, fine.
[22:29]
Alessandra: It’s interesting. It’s interesting that they would actually measure themselves in happiness KPIs. It’s weird. No?
Kathy: So again, but this is again, travel has, the way we look at places, has changed. Like happiness. 50-70 years ago, no one cared about happiness, so I love this. Tell me more. So the motivation, time of year doesn’t really matter.
Alessandra: No. Maybe shorter holidays, more frequent. And then with COVID as well, people got used to giving value to travel. So even breaking for something, even if you go and visit your relative just 100 kilometers away feels like a little bit of travel and you want to add a little spice to it. You don’t just go and visit your auntie, right? You go and visit your auntie and then you go to that restaurant and then you want to try that. By the way, I’ve heard that. So we also enriched the offer and we’re communicating it a little bit better. And people understand the power of that because the real challenge is not to get people to come, only to make people stay and make people go back and talk about it and talk about it means that… that’s the best marketing tool. You talk and then everybody wants to travel back.
Kathy: Obviously I do this for a living and I cover places and talk about them. But even the word of mouth for 25 years I’ve been going, my favorite place is Saturnia. I just think there’s something mad. We’ve talked about it. We both know Laura, who’s one of the healers there, and I have gone multiple times and run into people who went, because I mentioned it in a story, really not even doing any kind of promotion, just telling my experience. And I also think people are looking for experiences that their neighbors haven’t done, or they want to go and do what their neighbor did, but then they want to one up them and do something different. Are you finding that you’re creating really unusual experiences?
Alessandra: The word of mouth has an immense power. And I think talking about healers, if we talk energy…
Kathy: You know I love it.
[24:52]
Alessandra: It when you tell a story with a certain type of energy and energy is authentic and real, then you’re going to get people to follow you.
Kathy: Yeah.
Alessandra: It’s like I have so many followers and people coming to me to say, I follow you on LinkedIn. I love what you do. It’s really great what you do. And then I’m thinking “Oh my God, I have a fan base?” That’s incredible, but I don’t think I’m doing something special. But people recognize the authenticity of my sensitivity.
Kathy: I love your authenticity. And there’s also this-
Alessandra: And my passion.
Kathy: It’s a leadership too. And I’m not saying that in a corporate way. You’re like “Come with me. I know where we’re going to go, what we’re going to do.” And sometimes people need that in life. Someone that “Okay, I trust this person.”
[25:39]
Alessandra: Can I ask you a difficult question, Kathy? I sort of need it. Do you think people would follow me if I didn’t have my title? Do you think this energetic?
Kathy: Well, I wonder that too. I wonder that too. In my own life. You’re like “Oh, well I got this TV show and people think TV is all magical,” right? No, I do think they would because it’s energy. It’s energy. And I think we also have these ways of sharing that energy now that we never did before. Social media, like the written word. I see a lot of your LinkedIn that have thought leadership, but then you did the cutest Instagram story with me where we laughed about Italy and places to go. And I think people are looking for that, especially post COVID. We’ve had some hard years. We’re looking for good energy, and that’s why they’re coming to Italy too, because where else do you feel alive? Come on.
Alessandra: Well, I fully agree with you. And sometimes I just, Rome is… when you live in Rome, Rome can be difficult because Rome is angry. Rome is chaotic. So people are like, look, people have lives. And the city is very difficult to keep clean and very difficult to manage. It’s this combination of 2,500 years ago and modern technology.
Kathy: It’s a fascinating place.
Alessandra: But it’s difficult. I do understand from a management point of view, once again, it’s like I don’t care whether mayor is from, it’s from this party or the other party. I want to say thank you and bravo to the mayor because I know he’s trying hard. And when I can finally manage to get a bus to go to work, and I haven’t been able to do that all my life because he bought extra buses.
Kathy: So it’s getting better, you’re saying.
Alessandra: Damn, it’s great. And when I see him, I feel like telling him and I’m like, look, you’ve done a great job, my man. It’s not easy. Of course, you’re not going to be able to close all the holes of the street of Rome or fix the traffic. But I think what is important.
Kathy: Little… piano, piano. Little by little.
Alessandra: We need to keep the positive spirit, I think, Kathy.
Kathy: Rome wasn’t built in a day, as we say.
[27:53]
Alessandra: Well, Rome is not going to get destroyed, for sure.
Kathy: Let’s talk though, let’s talk. I could talk to you all day about the business of travel. I find it fascinating. But if we have just regular people watching who are ready to go to Italy, what is in store for them in 2026? What are you looking forward to, how do you think Italy’s going to shine?
Alessandra: Well, first of all, we have the winter Olympics. The Winter Olympics are right there in the north, Milan Cortina. But it’s not just going to be it. There’s going to be Olympics, Paralympics. So there’s going to be a lot of buzz, a lot of attention. So I do hope that all these part of Italy is going to be explored in detail. The amount of people is going to be very, very high. Then what I think is that some destinations are going to be definitely confirmed. There are rising stars. So the rising stars are actually the center of Italy. Umbria confirmed as a luxury destination. Super detailed, super chic, super boutique. And then the rise of a Abruzzo, as you know, L’Aquila capital of culture in 2026. And then Marche, who’s a great, fantastic diversity and definitely the confirmation of the superstar. So Puglia and Basilicata who are doing their best. But let me tell you what I’m expecting is going to grow.
Kathy: I’m listening.
Alessandra: Calabria.
Kathy: Oh yeah, that’s the new Puglia.
Alessandra: That’s… I fully agree.
[29:24]
Kathy: The New Sicily. Where should we go in Calabria?
Alessandra: So there are an absolute array of diversity of locations that are incredible. You go the mountains, you go the borghi, which is like the small villages, but you also have pristine beaches, incredible food, prices that are still affordable. And clearly the offer is not as huge yet, but it’s in development. So that’s the beauty of it. You go and discover something new, something different. We do hope that connectivity is going to get slightly better because that’s the one thing they suffer about. Calabria is rather long, because it’s the toe, before the actual-
Kathy: Beautiful.
Alessandra: End of the boot. But that’s something that I would keep an eye on.
Kathy: I will, I need to go back to Calabria. And what is it? Why the name of my whole life, my business is dream. Talking to all these tourists, talking to all these companies that are promoting tourism. What is the dream? What is Dream of Italy to you when you look at this kind of work you do?
Alessandra: Well, Dream of Italy is for the people to have the right experience at the right time in their life, something that they experience, and it’s going to change them forever, and it’s going to bring such a shift in a vision or maybe a comfort or maybe something that becomes an absolutely unforgettable memory. This is what Dream of Italy is. Dream of Italy is not the cliches. And if you allow me, it’s not even the queues to buy the panino that it has one million and a half, whatever followers.
Kathy: It’s that internal.
[31:09]
Alessandra: That is not the Dream of Italy that I want to think that happens, even though clearly I respect it fully because maybe Gen Z, that’s what they want and that’s the dream for them. But I do hope in something that is a little bit long lasting, I am very personal in this because I’m analogic. I’m from, from the generation of paper, books, writing diaries and then vinyls and then no telephones at some point in our life. So we just got, I remember I had my first Motorola, it was this big and it weighed 12 kilos.
But I grew like that, and I am very grateful for the childhood that I had. And I remember that travel was my dream. That’s anything would happen, and you would just, oh my God. And that things that leave an absolutely unforgettable and everlasting impression in your memory and in your personality. So I think Dream of Italy, if we manage as Italians to transfer a little bit of that je ne sais quoi, creativity, relaxation, love of life, smile, whatever it is, to the tourists that come to us, well, I think we’ve done something good for the world.
Kathy: Wow. And it’s very clear that because people keep coming back, travel is so transformative and travel changes you. But I don’t think there’s a place on earth, for me at least, that has changed me, transformed me, and each trip in some other way, another layer. So thank you so much for the work that you do, because I can tell it’s a calling more than anything. And I’ll see you again hopefully in Italy soon, and-
Alessandra: I’m looking forward my love.
[33:07]
Kathy: If anyone wants the show notes, they can come to dreamofitaly.com/podcast. They will put your LinkedIn, they can connect with you or see what you’re doing with your work and also some of your recommendations for where to go, what to do.
Alessandra: Absolutely.
Kathy: So, grazie.
Alessandra: No, thank you, Kathy. You are absolutely fantastic. I’m really grateful.
Kathy: Thank You.
For more information about this podcast episode, show notes and a discount on live tours, visit dreamofitaly.com/17.
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