Montalcino. Enough take a bite and run tourism

Montalcino. Enough take a bite and run tourism

Enough of this tourism that consumes a lot and leaves little: Montalcino could be the first innovative sustainable, social, and even sophisticated wine district

 

Tourism pollutes, not only exhaust fumes from the cars and busses, it pollutes by destroying the true soul of places; where there was a haberdashery shop for the residents opens up s souvenir shop, dishes are full of typical recipes never tasted before, the furniture in the restaurants is substituted with chairs and tables with the same design as those found in Capri and Cortina. Slowly the residents begin to feel as thug they are actors on a stage that represents their village. This explains why in touristic marketing the residents are called “consumed” so as to distinguish them from “consumers” who come to see them.

And what is worse is that tourism is going down. In fact the touristic destinations, like any other product, have a cycle. It’s divided into 4 phases; the beginning is all sunshine, with tourist welcomed as friends. Then the fist quarrels because of the inconvenience when tourists use parking spaces and services reserved for residents. Then arrives the phase called “colonization” – this is the phase that Montalcino is living now –and if this does not stop then there is the decline: the place is famous and attracts mass tourism with great numbers and little income.

Only those places who know how to regenerate, offer new services, defend themselves from touristic deterioration are able to last in time. Montalcino must succeed. But how?

With a rural district based on wine tourism. Not a Strada del vino, not

blending with the other 150 Strade already existent. Plus Montalcino already has all that normally comes with the creating of a Strada del vino: tourist office, wineries open to the public and equipped, street signposting, brochures with wineries, restaurants and wine stores with an assortment of local wines… all already here, plus 3 wine museums. Montalcino is the Italian territory where wine tourism is most developed. According to estimates in “Mondo” dated 9.03.2012tourism business is about 27 million euro per year without considering the periphery income. Montalcino has 1777 beds in 109 structures and 30 restaurants. Evidently the first economic sector is wine, with a volume of 150 million euro, but the number of people employed in wine making is maybe slightly superior to the tertiary from tourists. In other words a great wine territory with an excellent tourist structure, including two five star hotel and restaurants with high ratings and have alternated with offering signature cuisine.

Creating a wine tourism district in this context so well performing signifies transforming a group of talented enterprises into a team. The Rural District is a territorial system on which Europe is investing, as says Prof. Alessandro Pacciani, who is the expert of these systems and the major supporter. It means integration between institutions, enterprises, and the population to look at the future, creating models of development which are most sustainable, united and technologically advanced. In Montalcino it should be possible to better what is already existent and help enterprises to group together on innovative projects such as the wine bus, the Brunello tasting school for tourists, the sensorial wine museum-laboratory and why not a festival .This is all much superior to a Strada del vino and it leans on an interactive communication system, but most of all on a system of new rules in the respect of a local identity and of the development (of all not only of a few)

So enough of false artisan products, the typical cuisine that seems made up of the dame 6 recipes, stone walls where before there was plaster….

The tourist competition is won offering vegetables form the home vegetable plot, explaining in English the qualities of the prosciutto di cinta, reducing consumption of gas, and water and dividing refuse … Dreams? No this is the possible future!

Seen for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini