In terms of the global scenario, do you see it as a cyclical phase or a new normal?
Neither one nor the other, or perhaps both. International tourism is not slowing down, it’s redistributing. The 1.5 billion arrivals in 2025 tell us that global travel demand is structurally strong, resilient and almost irreducible. UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organization) projections are clear: we will reach 2 billion international arrivals by 2030. However, chasing this growth as an end in itself would be a mistake. Volume does not create value on its own, it creates pressure and impact. What’s changing is the geography of trust: conflicts redraw routes in real time, geopolitical tensions shift source markets, and perceived instability – often more powerful than actual instability – alters destination choices overnight. This is not a crisis, it is a permanent complexity, and the difference is crucial: crises are overcome, complexity is managed. Those in tourism who still think in terms of “when everything will go back to how it was before” have already lost. Those who instead build flexible systems, capable of reading weak signals and adapting quickly, have a huge advantage. The new normal is not instability, it’s the need to always be ready to change.
Given the cost of living and new priorities, do you reckon it results in fewer trips or different trips?
Different trips, without a doubt. The data tells us an interesting story: inflation hasn’t stopped tourism, but it has filtered it. The average traveller is making more conscious choices: more short stays throughout the year, fewer long, concentrated vacations and greater attention to value for money. Not just price, but value. That’s the distinction that matters. This is where artificial intelligence comes into play in a very concrete way. Between October 2024 and July 2025 alone, the use of AI in travel planning more than doubled, from 11% to 24% of global travellers. 40% of consumers already use AI to decide where to go, what to do, and where to stay. 78% say it improves the overall experience. The AI tourism market is currently worth 3.4 billion dollars and will grow to nearly 14 billion dollars by 2030. This is not a technical detail, it’s a structural transformation in traveller behavior. Those who plan with AI seek more personalized and targeted experiences, with less waste of time and money. They are more demanding, better informed, and less willing to accept standardized products. This further accelerates the polarization between high-quality tourism and mass tourism.
Italy: attractive or fragile?
Italy is both, and we need the courage to say it. We are one of the most sought-after destinations in the world: 237 billion euro contribution to GDP, over 13% of the national economy, 476 million annual presences, and an irreplaceable culture, landscape and gastronomic heritage. However, attractiveness is not a perpetual return. It’s a form of capital that can be eroded, which we are doing wherever we fail to manage flows, wherever we allow commercial homogenization to replace authentic identity and wherever residents stop living in the most beautiful destinations because they can no longer afford to. The central problem is that we measure the wrong things. Our metrics are still tied to the 20th century: number of arrivals, overnight stays, revenue per destination. We count heads. We count beds. We do not count value. And if we do not change what we measure, we will not change what we do. We need new indicators: quality of visitor experience, resident well-being, environmental sustainability, cultural integrity, and distributed economic value. AI finally gives us the tools to do this. We also need the political will and institutional courage to use them.
How could Florence turn potential pressures of overtourism into opportunities?
Florence has something very few cities in the world can claim: it’s already a global case study. The problem is that it risks remaining just that—a model for debate rather than a model for action. Real transformation starts with a radical paradigm shift: stop thinking of tourism as something to promote and start thinking of it as something to govern. They are not the same. Promoting means attracting. Governing means directing, distributing and protecting. The most advanced destinations in the world have already introduced concrete capacity management tools: controlled access, entrance tickets for fragile sites, regulation of flows during peak seasons and moratoriums on new accommodations in saturated areas. These are not anti-tourism measures, they protect long-term attractiveness. A destination that does not know how to limit itself today will not be desirable tomorrow. DMOs are crucial in this process but only if they move beyond destination marketing and become true governance tools: capacity management, smart deseasonalization and active promotion of lesser-known areas within the city and metropolitan area. Here AI plays a key role: predictive data allows us to anticipate peaks, distribute demand, and direct flows before they become unsustainable pressure. Florence must not become an open-air museum, it must remain a city. That is its real opportunity and its true exportable model.
Do you see the future of tourism as slower, more expensive and more conscious?
Yes, but with an important clarification. Not “more expensive” in the sense of exclusive or elitist. “More expensive” in the sense of being more honestly priced: a form of tourism that incorporates the real environmental, social and cultural cost of the experience. A tourism model that stops externalizing costs onto local communities and begins to return value to the places it visits. Slower, yes. Not as a niche trend for those who can afford to linger, but as a new cultural paradigm. The traveller of the future seeks what is “lived” more than what is “photographed.” They want a real connection with places, people, and traditions. They want to return and not simply pass through. More conscious, certainly. And here artificial intelligence has a role that’s often underestimated: it does not replace human intelligence in tourism, it amplifies it. Those who know how to use it with vision – not just technical skill – to build intelligent governance systems, to measure what truly matters, to bring the right traveller to the right place at the right time, will have a huge competitive advantage. The future of tourism is not in the numbers. It’s in the balances we are able to create. 2 billion tourists by 2030 is not a goal—it’s a fact. The real question is: are we ready to manage it? We do not manage flows. We create balance.
