Page 59 - World Heritage and Tourism Innovation

Raffaela Gabriella Rizzo An intangible cultural heritage asset

designed to overcome the economic and social impact and cultural tourism in this age of Tourism 4.0 – and
of the pandemic and construct a new Italy … giving heading towards 5.0 (Carbone, 2020; Pencarelli, 2020;
it the necessary instruments to face the environmen- Stankov & Gretzel, 2020): smart tourism, e-tourism,
tal, technological and social challenges of our time Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality, virtual re-
and of the future” (Ministry of Economy and Finance ality, metaverse, phygital, travel designer, travel blog-
of Italy, 2021b). One of the six projected missions is ger, communities, Exponential Organization (ExO),
that of “digitalisation, innovation, competitiveness Online Tour Operator/Online Travel Agencies (OTA),
and culture”, which represents the second item of ex- Destination Management Organization (DMO)…:
penditure and includes “investments in tourism and a lexicon that bears witness to the concatenation of
culture” for a sum of over 8 billion Euro, (Missione challenges and opportunities and – at the same time
M1C3 – Turismo e Cultura 4.0) (see Table 1.1 of the – potential problems and threats that the transforma-
Ministry of Economy and Finance of Italy, 2021a, p. tion of the tourist sector is bringing about.
24). In Mission M1C3, the Italian government propos-
es courses of action aimed at “valorising historic and The Violin Making District of Cremona: Creative
cultural sites” through interventions “accompanied and Cultural Craftsmanship
by efforts to augment tourist/accommodation facili- Though small in terms of the number of people it em-
ties and tourism services, to improve the standard of ploys, this district is very complex: the value chain re-
what is on offer and increase its overall attractiveness. veals elements of very different kinds that are closely
These operations of producing added quality /renew- integrated. Most of these elements are situated in the
al of what is available for tourists are in line with a city’s historic centre; they occupy urban buildings and
philosophy of environmental sustainability and full create the aesthetic “landscape” of portions of the city.
exploitation of the potential of digital media, taking The luthiers – who, as a whole, constitute the actual
advantage of the new technologies to offer new ser- nucleus of an ‘industrial district’ – have their artisanal
vices and improve access to tourist/cultural resourc- workshops mainly close to one another, and they are,
es” (Ministry of Economy and Finance of Italy, 2021a, in turn, close to any satellite activities. They may sell
p. 89) (Mancini Palamoni, 2022, p. 4). their products directly or commercially (Macconi
Within the context of this European and national & Antoldi, 2020; Tuccia, n.d.). They often carry out
picture, one finds the figure of a constantly evolving their work “in the shop window”, in full view of those
tourist. On the one hand, there is talk of the phenom- passing outside. They operate practically in an experi-
enon of transformational tourism (Pung et al., 2020; enced, manual fashion, with high quality and profes-
Pung & Del Chiappa, 2020) as “a positive change in sionalism. Their biographies are fascinating: they have
attitudes and values among those who participate in always attended the International School in Cremona
the tourist experience” (Christie & Mason in Pung et or other educational establishments elsewhere and
al., 2020, p. 2) and of the co-design of a cultural tourist have then undergone specialist training in the city or
experience (Cuomo et al., 2021). Conversely, the tour- abroad (e.g., in Lausanne in Switzerland, New York,
ist figure emerges as a subject who is “contemporary, UK…) in the workshops of eminent luthiers. One can
increasingly digitalised and omnivorous concerning read their stories on their business websites or – if
the content and touchpoints to gain access to informa- they are members – on the website of the Consorzio
tion and make his or her choices as a consumer” (Batt- “A. Stradivari” Liutai, where one can also admire some
aglia et al., 2021, p. 131). At the same time, the tourist of the instruments they have produced. The life sto-
is an actor increasingly seeking experiences providing ries of the luthiers are very varied: some come from
territorial identity, authenticity, and proximity. This Conservatories and are real musicians (just as an ex-
quest leads the tourist to interact – not only in a pas- ample, see Gabbani Martin, n.d.) Some also have ex-
sive manner – with concepts that are proposed with perience as teachers at the School of Violin Making
ever greater insistence by those who produce tourism and in the workshops. They participate in instrument

Proceedings of the 7th UNESCO UNITWIN Conference | 55