Genoa: an industrial city becomes a tourist destination

Dear colleagues & friends,

Last time, in St. Petersburg, I had the honour of joining the R&S Knowledge Group, and now I’m very glad to be able to tell you a little about me and my city.

I have worked in the tourism field since 1998, when I was lucky enough to start working for the tourism board of the city of Genoa. That was really a great opportunity for me, because I studied tourism first at school and afterwards at university.

I gained some important experience in several departments, dealing with tourism all my professional life at different levels and working on important projects connected to the development and promotion of tourism.

In 2005 I joined the new city tourism office and became – among other things – responsible for the statistics of the metropolitan area. At the same time I joined TourMIS, trying to update and reorganize Genoa’s data in the TourMIS portal.

Genoa is the capital city of the region Liguria, that has two Rivieras with long traditions as tourist destinations. On the other side Genoa, in the past considered one of the most beautiful cities in Italy for the magnificence of its palaces and architecture, became an industrial and commercial city after the two world wars and realized that regeneration and renovation were required only at the beginning of the ‘90s when it understood that it was at a turning point. Then it decided to transform itself and to restore its artistic and cultural heritage in order to become – again – a tourist destination and benefit from the tourism industry to recover its economy.

Therefore, with the financial support of the state, the city restored the old commercial port and, thanks to the world famous architect Renzo Piano, it redesigned the waterfront (Aquarium, Congress Centre, Naval Museum) and transformed it into a tourist area. At the same time it started to restore the medieval city centre, one of the widest in Europe.

Then, after being the seat for the G8 summit in 2001 and Cultural Capital of Europe in 2004, the city benefited from more state funding to continue its transformation and with these two big events became much more prominent on the international scene.

In 2006 came the great shift: part of the restored architectural heritage was put on the UNESCO heritage list. After this the city became to all intents and purposes an art city, a tourist destination.

Genoa is without doubt always more a city break destination; people from all over the world stay on average 2.5 days and usually over a week-end. Genoa is also a cruise destination and for the future is trying to understand the best way both to improve transportation links and make the most of its cultural attractions and exhibition to become, step by step, a city for all seasons.

Claudia Pinna
Developing and promotion of the Tourism Office
Comune di Genova