Before Traveling to Italy I believe many people already know about the culture. The history and the Italian culture are something studied by every school child from a very young age. This is what sparks the interest of many who are looking to travel, making Italy the fifth most popular travel destination in the world. One of the main industries for Italy is its tourism which earns the country over 43 billion dollars a year.
The reason I believe one of the main motivators is history and the school learning environment is because I have never seen any advertisements for the country. Advertisement is what sparks interest and being that there are little to non that I have seen I believe that history books and news articles about ancient Rome and Italy spark the interest. Some other factors that affect the tourism in Italy are the movies made about the Greeks and the Romans. These movies have a huge following and people want to experience and live in the movie. Another reason I believe people come is for the amazing architecture and art work. Those who are looking and experience the magnificent monuments can always be heard commenting about how they were able to build such structurally sound architecture. It is amazing to see how much people appreciate the difference between the current architecture and art work and that of the past.
Coming to Italy I was expecting to see a Convention and Visitors bureau. I was surprised when I did not see one and there were little to no advertisements in any of the cities that I visited. Not even Rome one of the largest cities in Italy have any sort of ad or billboard in the airport or even in the city. I came to find out it was very different from that of the United States. Most cities have a city commerce which is in charge of their tourism, which is very similar to the US. The city commerce then reports to the Minister of Tourism. The Minister then invites other countries to come and visit Italy. It was interesting to see the difference in this because there does not seem to be as much competition between the cities as there is the United States. The cities that are right next to each other fight to capture the attention and lure the tourist to the other city.
I found it interesting that the hotels have a star rating but it is not done by the government or the Minister of Tourism. The hotels range from 1-7 stars. The only seven star hotel is in Milan. The other hotels range from one to five. In the United States there are only one to five stars. Different organizations go around to hotels to rate them. It is specifically noted which type of rating it has. The hotel signs outside of the building do not have the stars on them. You can find the star rating once you are inside but they are rarely on the outside. The rating systems of the hotels are also very different. If the United States would give the hotels much lower stars than the ones they have.
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