More than a third of tourists’ purchases in Italy concerns food. More and more people, both Italian and foreigners, like to eat in Italy’s restaurants, pizzerias, trattorias or farmhouses. Without forgetting street-food or food and wine specialties in markets and village festivals. This is what emerges from an analysis of Italian farmers’ association Coldiretti, officially presented on the occasion of the International Tourism Exchange (Bit) in Milan.
THE IMPACT OF ITALIAN FOOD ON TOURISTS CHOICES
Food is the main item of the tourism total budget in Italy. For the first time, in 2018 Italian food’s economic impact reached 30 billion euros, considering both Italian and foreign tourists. In the last ten years there has been a boom in tourism spending for food, with a 40% increase from 2008 to date despite the global economic crisis. Italian food is also an element of attraction for foreigners who, more and more, choose the Italian taste routes as their destination.
THE ADDED VALUE OF MADE IN ITALY
“Food is the real added value of every typical Made in Italy holiday, as it can count on the leadership of Europe’s ‘greenest’ agriculture with 297 PDO and PGI specialities and 415 DOC/DOCG wines, 5,056 traditional regional products, and leadership in organic farming with over 60,000 farms. Italy is the only country in the world that can count on such records in quality, environmental sustainability and safety of its food production,” said the President of Coldiretti Ettore Prandini.