Sicily Guide

According to the OMT (The World Tourism Organization), Italy still keeps its fifth position as one of the most visited destinations in the world. Last year, tourist arrivals reached the record of 898 million travelers (+6,2%). Italy recorded an increase of 6,6% from January through October 2007. France, Spain, USA and China are the leading countries.

Considering the bad news coming from Italy these days and the little fragmented marketing that Italy does to attract tourism, this is indeed some great result! Ah, if we only were more organized and united!!!

Coincidences happen. It is just a few days ago that I talked badly about the industrial area of Giammoro and praised Aicon for its successes. Just yesterday I came across an article published on Il Corriere della Sera, the major Italian newspaper, where the journalist highlights the environmental disasters of the area concerning the city of Milazzo and its surroundings, basically the area I was talking about in my previous post. Milazzo is the city where I mostly spent my teenegar years. For five years, I woke up at 6AM to take the bus and go to school in Milazzo. Classes started at 8:30AM. The bus was taking me with several other kids through those polluted and filthy areas every morning. When I bought my first scooter, a Peugeot Metropolis, I remember riding it through those dumps to go to Milazzo. One day after school, I was riding it back home while there was a big explosion at the close refinery. Eight people died. It was in 1993 during my senior year of high school. A big cloud of smoke came up in the sky. It was a big accident, but nothing changed for Milazzo and its surrounding areas. Still people know that the area is unhealthy, still people suffer deadly diseases from it, still politicians know and promise, BUT nothing EVER EVER changes.

Check the article and the videos on Corriere.it (unfortunately, it is all in Italian. I have not had the time to translate)

The agony of Italia.it lasted 18 months. Somehow, the life of this portal resembles the life of the Prodi administration. When it was launched, the government went through a confidence vote and now that it was shut down permanently, the Prodi administration did not pass another confidence vote.

It is a mix of things that drags traffic to a web site: incoming links, search engine positioning, word of mouth, advertising, etc… None of this was done to promote Italia.it. The publicity it got at the beginning must have not worked, but nobody built in on the momentum. Italia.it - in spite of all the money spent on it - was a good idea. I do not understand why it was shut down. It was already there. After it was developed, the costs to run it are minimal especially if you consider the fact that no marketing dollars were spent in advertising it.

Poor shortsighted vision is what slows down Italy and it is not just on the Internet. Unfortunately, if you look around, it is like this in almost all different types of industry. Very sad

After so much pressure, Cuffaro, Sicily’s president, finally makes the right decision for Sicily and resigns…

Salvatore “Toto” Cuffaro, president of Sicily’s regional government, resigned today following a public outcry after he celebrated a five-year prison sentence against him by handing out pastries in his office.

Cuffaro was found guilty of obstruction of justice and sentenced on Jan. 18. A picture of him handing out cannoli the day after the conviction was published Jan. 20. Cuffaro, a member of the Union of Christian Democrats who previously said he wouldn’t step down, is appealing the verdict. In Italy, the appeals process must be exhausted before sentences are served.

Read more at Bloomberg News

Palermo will have a brand new bike lane in 270 days. This bike lane will connect via Archirafi to the Parco della Favorita and will cover 6KM (about 3.75 miles). The construction company Tecnital spa was appointed for this project. The cost of the bike lane is about 877,000 Euros and is financed by the region through a fund called Por Sicilia.

Agriturismo attracts more tourists and Sicily offers more agriturismo structures. According to the Agriturist Guide 2008 recently pubished by Confagricoltura , agriturismo structures are up 5,8% in Sicily in 2007. However, even if the supply grows, tourists increase only by %2 last year. More foreign tourists are staying at an agriturismo (+8%) than domestic (-2%). These numbers make hard to predict the new trends for 2008.

I started SicilyGuide.com because I thought there was little out there that talked about Sicily in the right way. Perhaps, I should have started an Italy Guide. In spite of the big money spent on the www.italia.it web portal, Amadeus denounces that Italy lags behind other countries and registered little visibility on the Internet today. Unfortunately, it is going to be hard to pick up especially with such a tumultuous political administration we have in Italy today.

I can write here that too many chances have been missing, but I will not do this. As a matter of fact, a country like Italy, for which tourism is one of the most important economic activities, does not have a serious strategy for online destination marketing. This is a bad sign. It is the usual story that Italy and the Italians prefer looking at the past rather than taking advantage of the new - low cost - technology. Spain and France are increasing their advantage over Italy every day and Italy just stays still without even trying to react (proacting is a term that I do not even dare using!).

This is old news now and I do not know for which reason I overlooked at it before, but I think it is worthy mentioning.

Planeta’s Sicily is at the top of the classification by the “Grand Jury Europeen”, one of the most exclusive and influential wine tasting teams world wide. In fact, the winery’s blend Cometa 2001 took first place, while its Chardonnay 2006 came in at third. The verdict of the annual “Great Wines” classification is made by the Grand Jury Europeen, which includes some of the most important wine critics in the world…

Read more at WineNews.it

The internationally famous Sagra del Mandorlo in Fiore (Almond Festival) in Agrigento risked being cancelled this year because the city said there was no money for its promotion. The Siciliam Region stepped out to save the event and promised some money. The head of the tourism department of the Sicilian Region, Dore Misuraca, affirmed that it will be added 130,000 Euros to the 202,000 Euros the Region was expected to give.

I guess it is always public money that saves everything at the end. God bless the Sicilian taxpayers!

For more information on the past editions, please visit www.mandorloinfiore.net

I have to say the center-right is pro business, but I have nver seen so many excellent Mafia arrests happening as with this center-left administration.

According to BBC News, Italian police have arrested 39 people in the Sicilian city of Palermo on suspicion of involvement in the island’s Mafia. The arrests followed intelligence gathered after November’s capture of alleged Mafia boss Salvatore Lo Piccolo, police said. Those arrested in the latest swoop include Mr Lo Piccolo’s son, Calogero.

Read more at BBC.co.uk

This is a topic I have covered extensively on this blog. Rocco Forte Hotels has received government’s financial support to build a resort and a golf course in an underdeveloped and economically poor area of Sicily. I heard about the project back in 2002 perhaps. The property was shedule to open at the end of 2006. Now, every time I go to the Rocco Forte web site, the opening is postponed. Environmentalists and interests of “political” nature have stopped the work in progress countless times now.

It is these days’ news that some towns of the Agrigento province got together to push laws to promote tourism to the area. Let’s see if their activity will pay off and Rocco Forte Hotels could finally gain from it.

I come from Pace del Mela, a village of the Messina province. I have written a couple of posts about it. Most of you know it. Every time I go back to my hometown, one more friend is employed by Aicon, a small luxury yacht designer located right in the Zona Industriale in Giammoro. Before I talk about Aicon, I need to give a bit of history about Giammoro and its surroundings.

The Zona Industriale is one of the most depressing areas you might imagine: once - as I have been told - a beautiful agricultural and unspoiled resort area, today one of the most polluted and forgotten places I have ever seen. The so called Cassa del Mezzogiorno (a financing project promoted to help Southern Italy developing its industries) gave lots of money to shady businesses that were only interested in exploiting the money and the area without any serious business model for growth. Local people now are left with an unhealthy area (some experts relate this to the scary percentage of cancer cases registered around, but no official report has ever been released) and an awful landscape.

Therefore, when I see a factory like Aicon employing plenty of local people, improving the economy of the area and getting titles on major international and national publications, I cannot be anything else BUT happy! It is these days’ news that Aicon has reported a 21% growth in the past quarter earnings. Congratulations, Aicon! Keep the good work!

Also, I know that locals think that it is the town’s duty to improve the area, but civic responsibility can start from good managed businesses. Aicon, please do something to improve the Zona Industriale in Giammoro: set a sample, push the authorities! After all these years abroad, I do not see why factories and healthy clean areas cannot live together.

For more information, please visit www.AiconYachts.com

I truly think that Sicilian wines are Sicily’s best ambassodor in the world. Vinitaly Tour organized by Verona Fiere is going to Mumbai and New Delhi with a some of the best Sicilian wineries this week. Here is a list:

Thanks to my friend Alex, I was introduced to photographer Pamela Parlapiano the other day. Pamela is third generation Italian-American. Her father’s family came from nearby Napoli, while her mother’s family was from Sicily. Pamela has been traveling the world as photographer and visited 33 countries since 1978. Soon, she is going to be in India once again. Just from talking to her, I got extremely fascinated by the personality of this woman. We shared opinions about Italy where she has been countless times and she talked to me about her heritage. She has recently been involved with Mothers to Mothers Foundation.

For more information, please visit her web site at www.pamelaparlapiano.com.

When it came down to business, Cosa Nostra could always count on fear. No more. In a rebellion shaking the Sicilian Mafia to its centuries-old roots, businesses are joining forces in refusing to submit to demands for protection money called “pizzo.”

And they’re getting away with it, threatening to sap an already weakened crime syndicate of one of its steadiest sources of revenue.

The Mafia has a history of bouncing back from defeat, but this time it is up against something entirely new: a Web site where businessmen are finding safety in numbers to say no to the mob.

At the same time, businessmen ranging from neighborhood shopkeepers to industrialists are being emboldened by arrests of fugitive bosses, and the discovery in raids of meticulous Mafia bookkeeping on who paid the “pizzo” and how much.

Read more at The Associated Press