Italy's cultural heritage is immeasurable. (Too immeasurable?)
Massimiliano Tonelli argues that Italy's vast cultural heritage poses significant marketing and communication challenges. The pandemic-induced domestic tourism has highlighted the country's overwhelming abundance of artistic, landscape, architectural, and museum assets. Tonelli warns that this superabundance creates chaos and confusion, making it difficult to avoid overlaps and cannibalization. He advocates for national strategies leveraging synergy between culture and tourism ministries, unpopular choices to limit communication of certain sites to local scales, overcoming regionalism, and segmenting target audiences. Without such an approach, wealth becomes counterproductive noise. The article was originally published in Artribune Magazine #56.
Key facts
- Italy's cultural heritage is described as immeasurable in quality, distribution, and biodiversity.
- Domestic tourism during the pandemic summer led to rediscovery of Italy's cultural wealth.
- Two main challenges are protection and valorization/communication of heritage.
- Marketing thrives on scarcity, not abundance; too much heritage creates chaos.
- Tonelli calls for national strategies, synergy between culture and tourism ministries.
- Some realities should not be communicated beyond local scale.
- Regionalism must be overcome; target segmentation is necessary.
- Article originally published in Artribune Magazine #56.
Entities
Artists
- Massimiliano Tonelli
Institutions
- Artribune
- Artribune Magazine
- Gambero Rosso
- Exibart
- Università di Siena
Locations
- Italy