Luxury travel is one of the
highest-growth sectors currently in the international travel
market, and it features along with other "niche" tourism sectors
such as food and wine and cultural tourism at the BIT
International Travel Fair February 11-13 at the Fiera Milano
convention centre.
Although worldwide tourism grows on average 4% per year,
luxury travel has risen 48% over the past five years: a trend
that will likely continue in 2016, according to tourism
marketing consultancy IPK International's World Travel Monitor.
Italian hoteliers' association Federalberghi estimates that
high-end tourism and occupancy in luxury hotels in Italy will
increase between 10-20% over last year, with a significant
portion of tourists coming from Arab countries.
According to Conde Nast Johansen, luxury tourists prefer
New York, Florence, Paris and Rome as their top destinations.
The BIT fair also focuses on leisure travel, however, and
in that sector food and wine tourism is an important part of
travel in Italy, a world leader in the sector with nearly 21,000
agritourism structures and over 6,600 farms.
A survey conducted by farmers' association Coldiretti with
polling institute Ixè revealed that more than four in 10
Italians chose a vacation in 2015 based on wine and food
tourism.
Sport tourism in Italy - estimated to be worth 6.3 billion
euros, with 1.5 billion in aquatic sports alone - is one of the
most promising sectors for seasonal tourism in 2016, according
to the National Tourism Observatory (ONT), which surveyed more
than 10 million trips and 60 million reservations.
Another niche travel sector is that of weddings celebrated
in Italy: 6,000 per year with English, Russian and American
citizens at the top of the list of those who say "I do" in
Italy.
And finally, Italy is 4th in Europe for total meeting
surface area in the business niche sector known as MICE -
Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Events.
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