Third International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies

Abstract

The shift from the industrial to the digital way of producing goods has led to a crisis in many factories. However, digital society has also increased tourism, cultural interests, and fragmented lifestyles. The one-year overall project, carried out by five researchers, has analysed how to design tourist paths for the “new tourist” (Poon, 1993) in the non-tourist Veneto’s region called Pedemontana. Drawing on theories on the circular society (Lacy and Rutqvist, 2015; Masiero, 2016), and combining interviews, storytelling, and political economy, I have focused on how food (producers, shoppers, chefs, restaurateurs, and tellers) can become the engine of the network and drive the tourist experience. An old mozzarella plant, for example, makes mozzarella again but is also connected to a restaurant, a B&B, a theatre, a storytelling tour, and an old hydro-electric turbine which shows how energy was produced before the centralization. In doing so, these food companies, apart from cheese and meat, in line with the circular society, also deliver immaterial goods such as knowledge, trust, respect for nature and wellbeing, and the new tourist may experience a “different” Veneto, far from the mass-consumed Venice.