|
The Agenzia Nazionale del Turismo - Italian State Tourist Board - is responsible for "the overseas promotion of tourism in Italy".
It pursues this objective by "adopting initiatives to raise awareness abroad of national and regional tourism resources, and in particular Italy's natural, environmental, historical, cultural, and artistic values", and to "lend assistance and offer technical services to Italian tourism enterprises, to enable them to penetrate foreign markets".
Given its responsibility for a general public interest, ENIT’s central core consists of promotion and direct communication with possible users/consumers residing in foreign countries, and providing service to Italian tourism enterprises.
The objects of the promotion and communication activities are Italy’s image and its overall tourism products. ENIT pursues its institutional goals through the following activities:
- Studying international markets, and in particular the connotations and trends in demand for individual and organized tourism;
- Constantly monitoring the development of foreign tourism demand;
- Planning designed operating strategies in agreement with Italian tourism’s public and private players: The Ministry of Economic Development, Regions, central public administrations, boards, professional associations, and producers of services for tourism: transport, hospitality, food service, public businesses, and so on.
ENIT pursues these objectives by employing a number of operating tools, such as:
- multimedia communication;
- mass media advertising;
- print, multimedia, and audiovisual production;
- data and image banks;
- traditional and telematic information distribution;
- material distribution;
- press relations in Italy and overseas;
- sectorial analyses and business strategy consulting services for the Regions and private Italian operators;
- organization of marketing meetings between Italian supply and foreign demand;
- organization of seminars for professional users;
- providing assistance to visits by Italian economic operators abroad, and by foreign economic operators to Italy;
- organization of meetings with administrative authorities, opinion makers, personalities, and representatives of cultural and artistic areas in the various foreign nations where ENIT offices are located;
- organization of and participation to fairs, expositions, exhibitions, and large-scale events in Italy and abroad;
- provision of assistance and operative consulting services to Italian tourism enterprises, as to how to plan productive activities and place Italy’s tourism assets and services on foreign markets.
ENIT maintains, develops, and oversees professional relations with national and foreign tourism demand enterprises in order to facilitate their commercial contacts, and with the international press, opinion makers, political, administrative, and cultural representatives in the countries where ENIT operates, with the objective of fostering and developing encounters between international demands - whether organized or individual - and Italian supply.
ENIT’s activities are aimed basically at two categories of customers/users:
- Collective demand organized by Italian and foreign operators in the industry: tour operators and travel agencies;
- Individual demand, consisting of the hundreds of millions of foreign citizens that are current or potential users of Italian tourism services.
Foreign demand in hospitality business involves an average of approximately 42 million foreign citizens, representing more than 160 million guest nights and monetary receipts of more than 31.000 million Euros.
Currently Italy is ranked fifth in the world for the number of international arrivals, and fourth for monetary revenues from foreign tourism (Source: UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, June 2008).
Organizational structure
ENIT’s organizational structure consists of: Headquarters in Rome: - Ufficio Studi Programmazione e Marketing [studies, planning and marketing office];
- Ufficio Relazioni Esterne Sviluppo e Manifestazioni [external relations, development, and events office];
- Ufficio Pubblicità e Sistemi Multimediali [advertising and multimedia systems office];
- Ufficio Sistemi Informatici ed Informativi [computer and information management systems offices]; - Ufficio Ragioneria [accounting office];
- Ufficio Personale [personnel office];
- Ufficio Pianificazione e Metodo [planning and methods office];
- Ufficio Amministrazione Patrimonio ed Affari Generali [administration, heritage, and general affairs office].
Its foreign network consists of 26 offices:
- 16 (Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Frankfurt, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Munich, Moscow, Paris, Prague Stockholm, Vienna, Zurich and Warsaw) in 12 European countries;
- 10 (Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, New York, Beijing, Sidney, Tokyo, Mumbai, San Paolo and Seoul) in 8 countries outside Europe.
Therefore, the ENIT network directly covers 19 nations accounting for more than 85% of foreign tourism. This percentage is increased if we take into consideration all areas covered by the foreign network including the countries where, although lacking a stable office, ENIT acts with its own resources.
|