Tourism scenarios in the post Covid. The rediscovery of slow tourism

The Covid-19 pandemic in the early months of 2020 caused, in Italy, a great brerakdown to tourism flows (Della Corte et al., 2021) interrupting to the strong increasing trend of the previous decade. The decline concerned in particular the international component, noting the absence of the important contribution that this represents for Italian tourism as a whole. However, 2021 recorded the first signs of recovery, also confirmed by the 2022 season, thanks to the rediscovery of a "slow" and sustainable tourism, the tourism of small villages and green paths that triggered compensatory phenomena, although mainly consisting of from internal tourism flows. In the last two years, under the pressure of the health emergency, Italian small cities and villages have been among the most demanded tourist destinations, far from the standard itineraries, as they are considered places where it is possible to enjoy opportunities and wider spaces and where combine the need for freedom with greater security. The post-Covid crisis therefore also represents an opportunity to address the issue of sustainability. According to the European Parliament's strategy for sustainable tourism, "the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a shift in the nature of travellers’ demands towards safe, clean and more sustainable tourism; underlines that local craft activities, agrotourism, rural tourism and ecotourism are an integral part of sustainable tourism, with an emphasis on discovering nature and the countryside in Europe via routes suitable for walking, cycling or horseback riding with shared access" (Parlamento Europeo, 2021). In this framework, the paper deals with the slow tourism (Clancy, 2014) focusing on the small villages, the cities of good living and outdoor itineraries by the analysis of some typical practices of slow travel. Based on virtuous examples, the study analyzes the organizational models and the strategies adopted in this contexts, in order to identify alternative practices and new promoting and fruition models of tourism in the name of slowness and sustainability.