Sardinia’s participation in the ItaliAbsolutely Village at the Las Vegas Travel Agent Forum was the first time the region was present at a U.S. travel show.
The U.S. is Sardinia’s first non-European market
“This is the first of a series of initiatives for 2025,- said regional tourism councillor Franco Cuccureddu. – This travel show has a select number of travel professional attendees which means they are here to do business. Equally important is the fact that there has been strong growth in Sardinia from the American market. The latest data shows there has been a growth of 36% in arrivals and 34% in overnights compared to the previous year, which places the United States as the tenth foreign market overall, and as the first non-European market. We also have a concentration of these visitors in 5-star and 5-star luxury hotels, and since we are an island with some transport difficulties, we are interested in working on quality rather than quantity, which is why the US market is extremely interesting for us”
“Sardinia is very competitive both in terms of price and quality”
“Interacting with operators, travel agents or tourism professionals from the US and Canada it was clear that Sardinia was seen as a sun and sea destination, and compared to other popular destinations for US travellers like French Polynesia, the Virgin Islands and the Caribbean, we are very competitive both in terms of price and quality. The problem is that we are only open for a few weeks a year. While the Maldives has a season long eight months, ours is only eight weeks, so here we have also brought products that can be attractive at different times of year as well as being complementary to a beach holiday. These include hiking, shopping, visiting towns and villages and archaeology, in short, products linked to the outdoors like hiking and walking trails and cycle routes and more. Sardinia is focusing a lot on these and the Americans really like them”
From centenarians to food to prison tours
Sardinia also presented unusual products like Bruzzone, the Land of Centenarians, which has already attracted some groups of Americans in search of the elixir of life, said Councillor Cuccureddu who added that there was much interest in Sardinia’s excellent gastronomy, its national parks and in an international project devised a few years ago with the then governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger. “We created a network between the three great prison islands of the world: Alcatraz, Robben Island where Mandela was imprisoned and the Asinara where mafia bosses were kept. It is estimated that 97.5% of the people in the world have never been into a prison, so there is a lot of curiosity about how people live in prisons. It is a small target but an interesting one because these three large maximum security prison islands are all island national parks, and they are all protected marine reserves, and ornithological centres so they have a lot in common.
A high level of satisfaction for the contacts made
“Regarding our participation at the ItaliAbsolutely Village the Region is happy when the operators are happy. We are monitoring their level of satisfaction which I reckon to be very high in the sense that that there have been a lot of contacts, some completely new while others have been with professionals who already work with Sardinia, so it's a matter of consolidating relationships. The degree of satisfaction is really very high and therefore I believe we will propose this participation again in the future.”
