The 'World Expo Tour' stopped over in Warsaw on Thursday and is scheduled to hit Vienna on Friday to promote the six-month Universal Exposition kicking off on May 1.
Lombardy Governor Roberto Maroni was scheduled to meet representatives of institutions and entrepreneurs to launch the Lombardy region as a destination for tourists visiting the region's capital city Milan during the food-themed fair which runs under the banner 'Feeding the world, energy for life'.
The World Expo Tour has already travelled to 13 cities including Barcelona, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Dublin, Bern, Tokyo, Rome, London, Washington, Montreal, Shanghai and Dubai.
And the Universal Exposition is at the centre of the annual International Tourism Exchange (BIT) running in Italy's financial capital from Thursday through Saturday.
The food-themed event will have two dedicated spaces at the tourism trade fair to give the public a taste of Expo through events including cooking shows by Expo chef ambassadors Ugo Alciati on Thursday, Massimo Oldani Friday and Enrico Bartolini on Saturday.
Over 2,000 exhibitors from 100 countries and 20 Italian regions are gathered in Milan for BIT less than 90 days from the start of Expo in an event organizers hope will help encourage people travelling to Italy for the world's fair to visit other parts of the country as well.
To date, some eight million Expo tickets have been sold.
About five million tickets have been purchased abroad, including one million in China alone.
Organizers are hoping to attract as many as 20 million visitors.
Meanwhile construction work is underway on pavilions at the massive Rho Pero exhibition center where Expo takes place.
Organizers said this week that Expo has invested 100 million euros to showcase developing countries with their food and agriculture at the center of the fair through thematic cluster pavilions.
Expo's exhibition design director Matteo Gatto said that during previous expos these countries "were placed in second or third row in large warehouses organized according to geographic areas while the large pavilions of rich countries were at the center.
"Expo has decided to do the opposite, placing these countries at the forefront of the exposition and giving them a dignity they have never had".
Countries will be grouped around nine thematic clusters "to create small villages" with a common theme or product including rice, coffee, spices and fruit.
Overall, the world's fair has been "an exceptional accelerator" for infrastructure spending, Diana Bracco, president of Milan Expo 2015, said this week.
The event has already meant some one billion euros in spending on infrastructure for the region, and is also boosting foreign investment in Italy, added Bracco.
Meanwhile the social profiles of the Universal Exposition have registered a growing number of followers as the much-awaited event draws closer.
According to data provided by the Blogmeter Observatory this week, the Italian Facebook page of Expo attracted 780,000 new followers between the end of October last year and mid-January.
It currently has almost one million followers.
During the same period, the Twitter profile @Expo2015Milano registered over 100,000 more followers and now boasts a community of 316,000.
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