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Rimini, 11/10/2023


President Cagnoni has left us a great legacy and I do not hide my emotion in interpreting, as of today, his historic role.

It is also true that, for many years on the Board of Directors, he and I experienced the growth of this company together, starting with the construction of this beautiful Expo Centre, then the building of our Palazzo dei Congressi conference centre, the merger with Vicenza and the company´s listing on the stock exchange to become an increasingly important player in the Italian and international exhibition sector.

We now have many new projects underway that aim to further improve and expand our premises and our business. But that´s not all.
We intend to accompany and support the development of all the economic sectors that we preside over with our trade shows because they are delicate ´worlds´ that carry with them enormous amounts of culture and tradition. However, they are constantly ´bombarded´ by the incessant need to seek innovation and growth opportunities without foregoing their own identity.

One of these worlds is tourism, the protagonist of TTG and InOut, which we are inaugurating today.

Tourism is a fundamental sector for the Italian economy, an industry that employs many people because it is based on human relations, a fair industry because it redistributes its income over a very long value chain populated by a huge number of small and medium-sized companies

A perfect sector for our country, which, does however suffer from a historical lack of a real industrial policy to ´accompany´ it, guide it, contribute to innovating its products/experiences and support it so that no mistakes are made which, over time, can prove fatal for the tourist destinations themselves.

When we talk about this industry, ´The Visitors Economy´, we are only concerned about the final part of the industrial process, in other words, the promotion of destinations, and on this we must acknowledge the constant commitment of the public sector which invests a great deal in this respect.

But then we forget that what we really have is a product problem, namely what we actually sell.

Every tourism product is an experience made up of several factors (visibility, of course, but also reachability, authenticity, uniqueness, coherence, service coordination, sustainability...), in short, a combination of planned and organised situations that contribute to making the experience of being in a place away from home exciting.

How are we organised to ensure that all this works in a coordinated and effective manner?

We invite our potential guests with a beautiful promise of a unique experience and then, when they finally arrive (in our country, in our region, in a tourist destination), we hope that everything happens spontaneously by bringing together the work of the dozens of suppliers where each is functional to a piece of the promised experience, in the hope that everything goes well.

That is not how an industry works.
It´s as if ´Mercedes´ promoted a beautiful new car and then hoped that all the suppliers of the wheels, the bodywork, the engine... organise themselves to assemble the car, without a plan, a design, a colour, rules and measurements to adhere to.
Imagine the result!

We must address this critical issue because, if we continue to manage our industry incompletely, we will miss out on great opportunities, we will make the wrong destination development plans, and we will often compromise landscapes or environments that are perhaps the main tourist attraction of that area.

And indeed, the result is that although we are still the most desired country to travel to, we are never at the top of the list of countries chosen for travel experiences.

We, as IEG, together with government representatives and the Associations, are here also to address these issues because they are fundamental for the resilience of the tourism industry and therefore of trade shows. And we are doing so with conviction, as the two amazing events opening today demonstrate.

That is why I wish all those here with us and the companies that have believed in us, truly profitable days of good work and good business.