Page 58 - World Heritage and Tourism Innovation

Raffaela Gabriella Rizzo An intangible cultural heritage asset

The Context of the Research The figures demonstrate that tourism is, for now, a
Having decided on the methodology of the study, set- limited phenomenon. Battilani (2019) also asserts
ting the two-party research question in a well-defined that “the entire Province of Cremona has never been
context was deemed appropriate; this revealed itself a tourist destination, despite the splendid cathedral
to be complex. and the attraction of the violin makers. The limited
From a methodological point of view, it was nec- number of tourist presences proves this. The interest
essary to: in tourism is very recent and has grown in parallel
a) define the area under examination – Cremona, city with the reappropriation of the ancient art of the luth-
of music – along with its tourist flow. iers”(pp. 120–121).
b) Identify the fundamental aspects that have recent-
ly delineated (and are continuing to transform) Covid and Post-globalisation
tourist destinations linked to UNESCO sites and A multidisciplinary debate about the crisis of the
others. paradigm (and of the dynamics) of globalisation is
c) Trace the identity of the contemporary tourist. currently taking place (Flew, 2020; Islam, 2021; Rou-
dometof, 2021; Shukla, 2021; Contractor, 2022). The re-
search shown here refers, on the one hand, to a period
The Territorial Context: Tourist Flows in Cremona in which SARS-Cov-2 (COVID-19) has been pandemic
The research began in the Province of Cremona before – perhaps now at the beginning of a post-pandemic
focusing on the urban context of the city of Cremona. phase? – and, on the other, in an era of post-globalisa-
Situated in the southern part of the Region of Lom- tion. Academics and researchers are trying to under-
bardy, this province had, on 1 January 2021, a resident stand what a new model of this phenomenon might
population of 352,242 and an area of 1,770,407 sq. km. be, as is nicely summarised by James and Steger: “’re-
The province presents itself (again in 2021) with globalisation’, that is, a profound rearrangement of
316 structures offering accommodation (hotels and globalisation’s constituent formations that are moving
others) that can boast 4,178 beds, mostly in 3- or 4-star conjecturally at different speeds and levels of intensi-
hotels and agritourims. In the five years 2015–2019, ar- ty” (James & Steger, 2021, p. 807).
rivals and overall stays increased, ending with 228,278
arrivals and 391,438 overnights. One can note a pre- The Figure for the Tourist
dominance of domestic tourism from the Lombardy In a similar scenario characterised by multiple chang-
Region and nearby Regions such as Emilia-Romagna, es in society and, simultaneously, by a certain degree
the Veneto and Piedmont, with an average stay of 1.7 of (generalised, worldwide) uncertainty about the
days. The 2020–2021 has not been considered, given future and hypothetical forecasts about what that
the drastic reduction in numbers due to the COVID-19 future might be, how can one describe the figure of
pandemic, whose only noteworthy outcome was in- the tourist? And, more specifically, that of the cultur-
creasing the average stay to 3 days. Changing territori- al/musical one? To try to reply to a question of this
al scale and entering the situation in the municipality significance, it is worth remembering that one of the
of Cremona (the province’s capital lies in the centre of significant challenges of this historical period (see b.)
the Po Valley), this contains in its territory (70,492 sq. is digital transformation, which is still taking place.
km) 44% of the province’s establishments offering ac- In this regard, one is reminded of the six pillars of the
commodation. This percentage covers 35% of the beds Recovery and Resilience Facility of the European Un-
(1,466) available in the province. Tourist flow in the ion (European Union, 2021) and the Piano Nazionale
municipality consisted of 81,012 arrivals and 156,133 di Ripresa e Resilienza #Nextgenerationitalia (Fadelli
overnights in 2019, characterised by the same snap- & Fava, 2021; Ministry of Economy and Finance of It-
shot of provenance indicated at the Provincial level aly, 2021a; D’Alessio, 2022; Meazza, 2022). The Italian
(Province of Cremona-Statistics Department, 2021). Plan contains “a series of actions and interventions

54 | Proceedings of the 7th UNESCO UNITWIN Conference