Pope Francis made his most familiar trip to Asti, in Italian Piedmont, in November to meet his second cousins in the land of his grandparents. Cousin Giorgio, as Jorge Mario Bergoglio is called there, returned to the land of his grandparents, where they opened a grocery store before emigrating to Argentina in 1929.
The Pontiff, unwittingly, became an example of a form of tourism that Italy has been studying carefully for some time: roots tourism. So much so that the transalpine country has just launched a plan to encourage descendants of Italians throughout the world to return to the towns of their ancestors. The objective is to help reactivate tourism in cities with less than 50,000 inhabitants.
This is a measure included in the Italian recovery plan that will involve an investment of 20 million euros. They will be used, among other things, to restructure unused homes and infrastructure to recover them and use them for tourism and local products, such as gastronomy. Tour operators will also be promoted or more special initiatives will be carried out for those who come with a more sentimental interest, such as the digitization of documents in the municipal archives to search for family history, thematic museums focused on emigration, special itineraries or dissemination activities with universities.
“The families that are born are a beautiful image of Italy, and they are also part of our foreign policy because they are often extraordinary resources for the country where they live. They must, however, preserve the Italian culture, which is not only preserving the language but also the cuisine and the memory of the place from which they left”, said the Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani, during the presentation.
Five ministries and some 600 municipalities have joined forces for the project, with the aim of revaluing small towns for second, third and fourth generation Italians. It is estimated that between 60 and 80 million people in the world are of Italian descent, mainly in South American countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, Colombia, Paraguay and Chile, but also in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium or the United Kingdom. According to figures from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in 2018 the economic flow generated by estate tourism reached 4,000 million euros, 7.5% more than the previous year.
Italy is not a pioneer in this plan of wanting to attract the attention of the diaspora. Other nations of emigrants, such as Ireland or Scotland, have promoted similar initiatives. In 2013, Dublin launched The Gathering, a government-backed initiative to organize events throughout the year that bring together people of Irish descent. Scotland did the same in 2009, under the Homecoming Scotland campaign – financed in part with European funds – to attract tourists with Scottish blood.
"This project is not only focused on those who live abroad and have Italian citizenship, it is dedicated to all those who have a part of Italian blood, who descend from grandparents who in their time emigrated to various destinations", said Giorgio Sili, Undersecretary of State of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Under this initiative, Italy also wants to promote sustainable tourism by wanting to value the lesser-known –and developed- areas of the country, to try to mitigate the differences in economic growth with respect to the areas of traditional tourist flows. They also consider that the figure of a tour operator specialized in tourism of roots can be an incentive for youth employment in areas affected by progressive depopulation, for which they intend to train these new professionals in coordination with the active associations in the territory, the centers academics and research and local authorities.
