Tourists of All Ages Are Heading to Groves and Mills This Summer

Olive oil-related tourism in Italy is grow­ing sub­stan­tially, with tourists increas­ingly inter­ested in olive-related on-site expe­ri­ences.

The farmer asso­ci­a­tion Coldiretti esti­mated that in the sum­mer of 2023, more than one-third of the tourism expen­di­tures in Italy would go to restau­rants, pizze­rias, food fairs and farm­houses.

A sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the expected €15 bil­lion food-related pur­chases will directly involve oleo­tourism and olive-related expe­ri­ences.

According to recently pub­lished research from Roberta Garibaldi, pres­i­dent of the Italian Wine and Food Tourism Association, oleo­tourism is boom­ing.

Garibaldi’s research shows that 72 per­cent of those who intend to visit an olive mill plan to pur­chase a qual­ity prod­uct rea­son­ably priced.

That is 5 per­cent less than what was reported before the onset of the Covid-19 pan­demic.

On the other hand, the research shows that up to 70 per­cent of tourists are now attracted by expe­ri­ences of olive food pair­ings and oppor­tu­ni­ties for tast­ing olive oils accom­pa­nied by locally-pro­duced food spe­cial­ties.

According to the research, 59 per­cent of tourists are now inter­ested in meet­ing and talk­ing with the olive oil pro­duc­ers to learn more about their work, the tra­di­tion behind the prod­uct and the ter­ri­tory it comes from.

That is a 10 per­cent increase com­pared to 2019 ​“pre-Covid” data. ​“Before Covid-19, I was often asked around for talks about olive oil and olive oil tast­ings,” Francesca Petrini, an organic pro­ducer in the Marche region of cen­tral Italy and owner of Fattoria Petrini, told Olive Oil Times.

“Today, tourists and oth­ers reach out for this knowl­edge, they scour the area look­ing for these expe­ri­ences. It is not me going out, it is them com­ing in,” she added.

“The dif­fer­ence between before and after the pan­demic emer­gency is huge,” Petrini con­tin­ued. ​“I think it has mainly to do with the fact that dur­ing that period, only lim­ited touris­tic oppor­tu­ni­ties were allowed. So we all longed for open spaces to visit in small groups.”

Some in the sec­tor believe that due to this con­fine­ment, a new trend was estab­lished based on qual­ity, health and new oppor­tu­ni­ties.

According to Garibaldi’s obser­va­tory, oleotourism’s pop­u­lar­ity is grow­ing through­out Italy, espe­cially in regions where local author­i­ties have approved reg­u­la­tions to spur its growth. The Marche regional author­i­ties have just approved one of their own.

Petrini, a pro­fes­sional olive oil taster and part of the offi­cial Marche regional panel, explained that many farm vis­i­tors ask how to directly con­tact the pro­ducer.

“Today, we are see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of tourists reach­ing the farms and the mills with the goal of see­ing how the olive oil pro­duc­tion process unfolds, how the pro­duc­tion chain works,” Petrini explained.

“Once they under­stand how the process works, what it implies and how it is done, it is for them much eas­ier to under­stand the true value of olive oil,” Petrini said.

“When food tourists can directly see the pro­duc­tion processes and see how food is pro­duced with care and how much atten­tion is given to recy­cling and reduc­ing the envi­ron­men­tal impact, they are then ready to taste a qual­ity prod­uct and acknowl­edge its value,” Mauro Rosati, gen­eral direc­tor of the Qualivita Foundation, told Olive Oil Times.

The Petrini farm also orga­nizes edu­ca­tional days, which allow vis­i­tors to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil and the other olive oil grades.

“That is a por­tion of our lessons. We also intro­duce tourists to the olive-rich his­tory of our land, which is the heart of a cen­tury-old tra­di­tion of olive oil mak­ing in the Marche region,” Petrini noted.

Apart from tast­ings and food pair­ings, Petrini’s vis­i­tors are encour­aged to visit the local olive museum and its 16^th-cen­tury his­toric olive oil mill and par­tic­i­pate in the other olive-related ini­tia­tives offered by the ter­ri­tory.

“The part­ner­ship among farms and farm­houses, pri­vate and pub­lic insti­tu­tions and orga­ni­za­tions is cru­cial for the devel­op­ment of oleo­tourism,” Petrini said. ​“Connecting the ter­ri­to­ries means to give value to the sin­gle projects as well as to the ter­ri­to­ries them­selves, in terms of land­scape, mon­u­men­tal and artis­tic her­itage.”

“The dif­fer­ence we see in oleo­tourism when com­pared to tra­di­tional tourism is that peo­ple do not only want to be spec­ta­tors. They want to take part in an expe­ri­ence,” she added. ​“They are look­ing to be enriched by that, to take home with them some­thing of value such as new knowl­edge and new skills.”

Garibaldi’s research shows that 66 per­cent of tourists are also inter­ested in explor­ing how olive farm­ers used to live and pro­duce, vis­it­ing his­tor­i­cal farm­houses and under­stand­ing the link between such rural life and olive oil pro­duc­tion.

Walks through olive groves, explor­ing ancient mills and vis­it­ing olive muse­ums con­sti­tute very attrac­tive parts of the tourist expe­ri­ence, even more for tourists over 45 years of age.

Younger tourists are keenly inter­ested in on-site expe­ri­ences such as can­dle­light din­ners in the olive groves and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the har­vest.

“If we do this well, through­out the ter­ri­to­ries, with an educa­tive approach, we can def­i­nitely recover a greater abil­ity to pro­mote the local excel­len­cies and their unique char­ac­ter­is­tics,” Rosati con­cluded.

• Coldiretti
• Roberta Garibaldi
• Turismo dell’ Olio