Originally published in FindYourItaly on January 27th, 2015
Words by Andrea Monti, photo by Iario Varenna.
We believe that most people would agree that Italy is extraordinary country, and we do want every citizen of the world to associate Italy with nature, culture, art, food and wine…. Most of all, we want to demonstrate that the average Italian person is an extraordinary one: creative, brilliant, hospitable and sociable, and that tourism is possible even with a very low impact on the visited countries and their resources.
We did join a wide movement of people and organizations who believe that tourism should be a force for social and economical improvement, and should encourage good environmental stewardship. As partners of the Italian Responsible Tourism Association (www.aitr.org), we have pledged to follow rules inspired by the global sustainable tourism criteria (www.gstcouncil.org).
But how to practically realize this? We set up an “Innovative Startup” as per the Italian law (FindyourItaly Srl is officially registered from 15/5/2013 with the headoffice based in Milan, at Politecnico di Milano Polihub structure – www.polihub.it) and we entered the Italian Responsible Tourism Association, with which we do share the values and ethics, in the attempt of impacting as less as possible the environment and citizens of the visited countries and destinations .
The Idea of leveraging a local network of people (our “buddies”) to promote responsible tourism to foreign trade operators seemed to be a good one: in April 2013 we won a scholarship for the Mind The Bridge Startup School in San Francisco, as part of the Startup Competition organized by Pavia’s Technological Pole.
In May 2013 we also won the first prize in the InnoVits Contest, as “best entrepreneurship project”. InnoVits is a non profit initiative aimed at selecting and supporting innovative business ideas, managed by the Alumni association of MIP, the Business School of Politecnico di Milano, and in 2014 we were been longlisted for the World responsible Tourism Award at WTM London.
From Autumn 2013 onwards, FindYourItaly attended the main tourism fairs in Italy and abroad (ITB Berlin and WTM London in Europe, and E-Tourism Lab, No Frills, TTG Incontri, Fà la cosa Giusta in Italy), check out our fairs schedule to request a personal meeting with our team!
