The Friuli-Venezia Giulia region confirms its presence at BIT2024 in a year of growth. The region continues to record rising numbers in terms of tourist flows, noting, for the first six months of 2023, an 8% increase in tourist presences compared to the previous year, for a growth in the overall regional GDP value of 14%.

Merit also goes to the Region's ability to adapt to an ever-changing sector such as tourism, through targeted investments and new promotional campaigns. We talked about this with Sergio Emidio Bini, Friuli-Venezia Giulia's Councilor for Tourism.

How are tourist flows doing compared to previous seasons?

“Compared to the past ,” said Bini, “Friuli-Venezia Giulia is at the center of unprecedented media visibility. This is thanks to careful and far-sighted planning that began even before the outbreak of the pandemic, major and targeted investments and teamwork with all the parties involved in welcoming visitors. The symbol of this virtuous synergy is the new identity slogan “Io sono Friuli Venezia Giulia” (I am Friuli Venezia Giulia), chosen to promote in an integrated manner both the area's food and wine excellences and the tourist resorts and values of our region and its people.

Thanks to this joint effort, Friuli-Venezia Giulia was among the first regions in Italy to recover pre-Covid tourism flows [...]. 2022 was a year of records - with 9.4 million visitors - but also 2023 opened with excellent results, thanks to the success of the winter season and major events with a strong national appeal, above all the Adunata degli Alpini. [...] Although the increase in costs and the bad weather, which, especially at the end of July, hit our region hard, to date the balance is overall positive and leaves significant room for improvement on which we intend to continue to work with determination and long-term planning.

Many of these results revolve around a new way of travelling, that of Slow-Tourism, which Friuli-Venezia Giulia has been able to combine with its offer. With its extraordinary variety of landscapes, from the mountains to the sea, vineyards, and historic towns, the region is focusing on new routes to meet the wishes of travelers in search of authentic experiences.

Slow and open-air tourism are now a must rather than a niche: what are the new routes (cycle routes, paths, railways, widespread hotels, rural recovery) on which FVG is focusing?

Friuli Venezia Giulia is a small region, which in only an hour's journey offers an extreme biodiversity, from the Alps and the Dolomites to the 130 kilometers of sandy to rocky coastline, the vineyards of Collio and the hills that host castles and charming palaces, a spectacular lagoon and five Unesco sites with centuries-old villages and towns and amazing food and wine options. A natural, artistic, cultural and food and wine wealth of this magnitude commits us to offering a varied selection of tourist products and consequently to promoting and communicating them nationally and internationally. In such a broad tourism context in terms of product variety, our focus is the outdoor segment most closely and with an eye to the future according also to national and international market trends. The area lends itself to more varied discovery than ever before without ever leaving the regional borders. In a limited space, a multitude of outdoor activities can be enjoyed: from water sports to snow sports, caving, climbing, paragliding, golf, without forgetting the bike trails that are one of the main offers for the active sports segment.

In this tourism ecosystem, what other sectors are going to be developed?

As mentioned above, the region has a vast variety of tourist offerings and this entails the need for integrated development, pursued through the new slogan “Io sono Friuli Venezia Giulia”. In addition to the outdoor segment - on which the focus is high - food and wine continues to be a key driver, while other fields of action will concern the family segment and the development of international markets.

The appointment with Friuli Venezia Giulia is scheduled at BIT2024 at fieramilanocity from Sunday 04 to Tuesday 06 February 2024.