At TTG 2024, ENIT highlighted a range of themes from sustainability, climate-conscious tourism and business travel with a focus on well-being, to heritage tourism, innovation, and shopping tourism. Year after year Italy consolidates its position as a top international tourist hotspot. This year, the Year of Heritage Tourism, the country’s allure is stronger than ever, with a 15.2% surge in international airport passengers in the first seven months alone, according to Assaeroporti.
This positive trend finds Italy with the wind in its sails, and prudent flow management strategies will enable operators to move closer to saturation levels. ENIT is concentrating on sustainability, verifying and monitoring the ecological footprint of tourists, the impact of tourism on destinations, and the ability of businesses to put into practice the sustainability criteria laid down by the EU. It is also supporting destinations with traditional, web, and social communications aimed at an increasingly more aware tourist, working towards the creation of a complex and composite model for a stronger sustainable regeneration of the entire tourism system.
One relevant area is the ability to manage climate change, for which ENIT is analyzing data and best practices to provide destinations with viable solutions for emergencies through planned actions that can counter change, while making its tourism destinations increasingly safe, attractive and exciting. This revolution of the tourism system in a green key is accompanied by shifts in focus necessary to make the Italian tourist offer increasingly competitive. 
In addition to the immense heritage of Italy's cultural and natural resources, typical products and food and wine, the professionals who work to make travel experiences memorable and unique must be put back at the centre of the development of tourism. To boost employee satisfaction we need to implement processes and models that enhance both service efficiency and staff well-being. At the same time digital growth plays a crucial role, driven by innovative solutions from the start-up ecosystem aimed at transforming the tourism industry and improving the services offered.
Our ability to tell the story of Italy’s vitality is passed on to tourists through our natural and cultural landscapes, history, traditions, rituals and local excellences. It is a story that brings countless international travellers back to Italy to visit relatives and friends (7 million in 2023 for 76.8 million overnight stays and €11.2 billion in spending), rediscovering their origins in the year that celebrates Heritage Tourism in Italy.
ENIT recently highlighted the heritage tourism theme in the Italian Village at the Tokyo International Cruise Terminal marking the arrival of the Amerigo Vespucci ship for the first time in Japan, on a tour that included Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and will continue to Singapore, Darwin and Mumbai. Italy's renowned shopping districts and fashion streets are among the key attractions promoted by ENIT through its 26 international offices, and they draw 7.7 million international visitors annually who contribute €1.2 billion to tourism spending.
