Resorts, concrete and big numbers. What vision for tourism?

25 February 2025

‘Political, entrepreneurial and academic forces have recently shown renewed sensitivity to tourism thanks to PNRR funding. Relying on ‘expert’ evaluations, the Garda Tourism Observatory and the Garda community assigned the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart the task of ‘statisticising’ Garda tourism. The research highlighted the ranking of importance among the various areas and towns on Lake Garda, the significant differences in the intensity of flows and the relative market shares, while the sociological data was entrusted to a questionnaire for the mayors of the lakeside areas on the subject of the consequences of tourist overcrowding on the environment and sustainability.
Buzzwords that our first citizens often use but fail to promote. On the contrary. In fact, they contradict them. They participate in the destruction of the nature of a protected area and condemn our biodiversity, unique in the world, to extinction: bike paths and tons of iron and cement are hung on the cliffs, witnesses of wild nature; mountains are gutted to make room for luxury resorts.

Resorts and concrete
I cite, for example, the ‘Park Resort Lake’ in Salò, a new artificial five-star resort with eleven buildings and 170 flats, or a new five-star hotel with 140 suites covering a total of 71,425 square metres in Formaga (Gargnano), not to mention the myriad of new settlements that have sprung up like mushrooms in recent years on the Veronese shore.
Half a century ago the Veneto shore intercepted more than 50% of the Garda clientele, in Limone there was a ratio of 1 resident for every 8-9 foreigners during the high tourist season (1980 data). One of the lowest ratios among those existing in Italian holiday resorts. Today, the same municipalities with the longest tradition of tourism hold more or less the same records and still drive and condition the development of initiatives in the Garda tourist sector.
If we take away the ‘hot air’ of conferences and put Lake Garda tourism in front of the mirror, the passage of time reflects more or less the exact same image aged 50 years. A beautiful, luxurious car from fifty years ago cannot hold a candle to the expectations and demands of today. The same applies to tourism.

Tourism, a phenomenon to be analysed as a whole
In any case, quantitative research alone, necessarily generalising and abstract, cannot and, I believe, will not capture the complexity of the phenomena induced by tourism. In fact, there is a lack of in-depth studies on the tourism phenomenon as a whole: on the relationship between the resident population and tourists; on the effects of local employment in the sector; on the effects of tourism on public institutions, on the social and cultural deconstruction of the territory; on the life cycle of the tourism product in its stages of maturity and inevitable decline (see the age of hotel structures).
In the 1980s it was believed that landscape and nature were not enough, but that there was a need to equip municipal territories with infrastructures for sporting, cultural and recreational life; today our first citizens respond to the questionnaire dated 2025 with the exact same motivations to expand the tourist offer: events and shows!
In this way, the truest pages of our history continue to be torn out and lost: they no longer belong to us but are dictated by lobbies interested in large numbers and not in the needs of precious local differences.The unsuspecting mayors do not realise that the only change they have introduced in recent years is the development model that until a few decades ago took into account the needs of their constituents by recognising the needs that are the root of living in a community, while today they respond exclusively and zealously to the ‘solicitations of wealthy entrepreneurs and financial operations that characterise “luxury tourism” by serving the territory while leaving as little as possible in return.

An increasingly globalised and standardised proposal
Moreover, strange as it may seem, they promote underpaid labour and a development model incapable of designing a future for local residents and businesses. They induce hundreds of poor immigrant workers in the sector to look for rented flats, driving up their market value disproportionately and consequently driving new generations away from their place of birth.
These forms of entrepreneurship find funding based on questionable marketing theories and a common goal: to publicise a façade image of the entire lake in order to position themselves in the international propaganda war, inflated by labels that are the same the world over. In other words, they market one of the most prestigious sites of Italian tourism in the same way as any other supermarket product. Perhaps this is why they rely on quantitative research, necessarily generalising and abstract, which cannot grasp the richness and complexity of the phenomena induced by tourism, including the very relationship between the resident population and tourists; the effects of local employment in the sector; the effects of tourism on public institutions; the social and cultural deconstruction of the territory; the life cycle of the tourism product in its stages of maturity and inevitable decay (see the age of hotel structures).

The value of respect for the environment
Research by leading national and international institutes clearly indicates that the future of a tourism business is nourished by the ability to ‘create an exclusive demand linked to respect for the environment’. The carp that could ignite curiosity around the world with scientific research is no longer destined to become an object of political decision. A salmonid that is unique in the world and only lives in Lake Garda, venerated and carved on capitals since antiquity with the crown of the fish king, is not perceived as the jewel that gives authenticity and uniqueness. Two notions that appear in first place in the desires of tourists consulted by scientific research.
Similarly, the hilly and mountainous terrain, of great environmental value, is in need of ordinary maintenance and, therefore, of the recognition and support of those who maintain and work for this purpose. Bringing our ecosystem back to its former splendour, its strong territorial identity rich in culture and biodiversity, is the real innovation to fully contribute to creating the conditions for a favourable impact on the entire economic and social fabric as well, as opposed to chaotic, artificial tourism and the standardisation of these entrepreneurial offers by the tourism multinationals. ‘The decline of a country has to do with what we have been unwilling or unable to transform through the habit of always keeping things as they are by taking one's own achievements instead of the performance of the competition as a basis. Comfortable and reassuring roads lead nowhere, they only make the journey more boring'. These are the remarks of one of the most important managers in the industry.
The Garda tourism industry is in its declining phase contrary to what the ‘reassuring’ fans of ‘record years’ of presences claim. If we do not have the courage and intelligence to change and take back those constituent ingredients of our cultural identities, we residents will end up like the carp. Forced to disappear due to the greed of greedy profit-takers'.


Read the full article on:  https://www.gardapost.it/2025/02/25/resort-cemento-e-grandi-numeri-quale-visione-per-il-turismo/