Tourism marketing strategy and plan for Milan and Lombardy
Tourism Marketing Strategy And Plan For Milan And Lombardy
1. Destination Marketing Strategy and Plan for Milan and Lombardy AUTHORS : Andrea Scacchioli, Mirko Chianesi, Stefania Sossi, Simone Marco Vaglica, Davide Antonelli TEAM EXERCISE 2
2. Milano 2011 Milano 2015 M ICE Business segment Leisure segment Leisure segment Business segment /MICE MILANO’S LIFE CYCLE: NOW AND THEN
19. ANDREA SCACCHIOLI . . . “Tourism provides a unique opportunity to personalize our relationship with places” MIRKO CHIANESI SIMONE MARCO VAGLICA STEFANIA SOSSI DAVIDE ANTONELLI
Hinweis der Redaktion
The city of Milan attracts mainly the business segment (Exhibitions, Congresses, Conventions) The EXPO of 2015 could be a good occasion not only to increase the business travels, but also to enhance the leisure and group segments
The image of Milan it is associated almost exclusively to fashion (its contribution to fashion is perceived to be the greatest contribution of any city in any field), shopping, business, design, but the city is also rich in culture and history: i.e. Duomo Cathedral, Castello Sforzesco, Scala theatre etc… What do foreigners think about Milan : Public amenities scores are poor Seen to be polluted with poor air quality and uncleanliness Unfriendly Inconsistant quality of services In October 2009 the “Bicocca” University of Milan researched about “Urban Tourism and destination marketing: image and appeal of Italian cities” based on interviews in order to discover what perception local people had of their town. From the results of the interviews, people would rather have: less industry more innovative and modern facilities, arts and culture better quality of water
Besides the well known attractions, Milan, as well as Lombardy, have a huge potential in term of pull factors that could be very useful to reinforce the tourist offer: Large lakes (Lake Garda, lake Maggiore, lake of Como) Mountains and national parks (Stelvio, Adamello, Adda), which represent a significant contrast compared to the experience that a tourists can have in the city of Milan Canal systems: the Navigli canal system which represents an important historical tourist attraction. City alternatives: lots of possible itineraries in smaller cities nearby Milan (Como, Bergamo, Sondrio, Pavia)
The real challenge: to promote the city of Milan as a leisure destination through a long term strategy. A big event as the EXPO 2015 could be a good starting point to develop such a strategy, re-positioning Milan from business oriented, to a business and leisure destination on the global market.
The Lombardy Region and the City of Milan are the two main public actors involved in the Expo 2015 plan. They are working close to each other in order to give an overview of the final project and they are providing guidelines to every actor involved in the event. A possible threat for the city would be the lack of coordination between those public actors and the private ones, such as Confcommercio and Confindustria which, representing the interests of the private segment, might have different goals in comparison with the public organizations. Another possible threat, very actual indeed, is related to the political issues that the city of Milan is facing nowadays: the new major might disagree with the solutions proposed by the previous one, and this would almost certainly end into an endless discussion between the parties, with bad results for the city itself. Legambiente , a public organization mixed with private sector entities, will have the goal of providing green solutions for the huge changes that the city of Milan is facing in order to give to Expo 2015 the best infrastructures necessaries for the outstanding amount of people that will visit the city starting from May 2015.
If Expo 2015 will be just an exhibition, it will loose half of its potential. The Expo must be a starting point in order to re-launch the city of Milan in the huge panorama of city destinations worldwide. We all can imagine the potential that such a big event can bring to the city in terms of visibility. But it is interesting also to remark how it can be an opportunity to develop new jobs and new professional figures not previously present in the Italian and regional market. The biggest example is the need of a DMO, as we already said before. But also, it can be a great chance to emerge in the congress and convention market: the MIC (Milano Convention Centre), with its 18000 seats, is currently the biggest in Europe. Another important remark is given by the Expo theme: “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”: this is a unique opportunity to promote Milano as the world top destination for food. Just to give some examples, here’s a list of new professional figures that will be needed by the time of the exposition: event managers, fundraisers, social communicators, eco-auditor, energy managers, mobility managers, eco-managers… and much other professional figures that are not present nowadays in the national market.
