Brazil is an important market, says the Italian tourism agency

The CEO of Enit, Ivana Jelinic, visited São Paulo

By Lucas Rizzi – With over 30 million people of Italian origin among its inhabitants, Brazil is an “extremely interesting” market for the tourism sector in Italy, which is preparing for a year entirely dedicated to the promotion of travel to rediscover its origins family members.

This was stated by the managing director of the National Tourism Organization (Enit), Ivana Jelinic, in an interview with ANSA during a visit to Sao Paulo, considered by many to be the largest “Italian” city in the world.

“For us this is an important market due to the high spending power of the Brazilian market and the trend towards medium and long stays”, said Jelinic, who has headed ENIT since the end of November.

According to her, Brazilians make, on average, trips of 15-20 days, in which Italy is often inserted into a circuit of other European countries, such as Portugal, Spain and France. “Italy is a destination that Brazilians love very much.

There are many cultural and food and wine affinities between the two countries. It is an extremely interesting market for us,” she added.

Until 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, around 1.2 million tourists entered Italy with Brazilian passports every year (those traveling with Italian passports are not included in the statistics), but, according to Jelinic, “there is still plenty of room to grow.”

His visit takes place about three weeks before WTM Latin America, the main tourism fair in Latin America, which takes place from 3 to 5 April, in Sao Paulo, with the presence of an Enit stand.

The agency already has its sights set on 2024, when Italy will promote the “Year of Roots Tourism”, a project that aims to encourage the rediscovery of origins by Italian descendants and promote less visited destinations. “Roots tourism has this characteristic of being very evocative because it refers to one’s personal history, becoming one more reason to discover places where one would not normally go”, underlined Jelinic.

Enit is preparing a series of extraordinary activities with the rest of the Italian system, which should start in the second half of 2023. One of the objectives is to bring Brazilian and Italian operators closer together so that the private sector feels encouraged to create products aimed at roots tourism.

“In Italy there is an enhancement of the territories, but this only takes place if people have offers of travel opportunities that refer to this theme, and only the private sector can do it”, explained the managing director. .

Source: Terra

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