Opportunities and potentialities of the Industrial Tourism: The “Make it in Puglia” Project

Nowadays tourism demand grows to new innovative sustainable and experiential proposals. This paper explores the potentiality of a specific form of experiential tourism, the industrial tourism, also through the illustration of an innovative project which tries taking its opportunities for the Puglia region in Italy. In the last years, there has been a growing presence of academic contributions about industrial tourism, also as a result on experimental initiatives started in many countries around the world. The term “industrial tourism” is the most recurrent, even if different concepts appear for various reasons, in order to better specify its scope and aim, like “living tourism industry” (also present in Spanish as “turismo de industria viva”), “tourisme de la découverte économique” (i.e. economic discovery tourism) in French, and “turismo d’impresa” (i.e. entrepreneurial tourism) in Italian. Considering the literature review on these concepts, industrial tourism can be conceived as an “umbrella” definition that is based on three major pillars: the industrial archaeological heritage; exhibitions, archives and museums of enterprise; active companies. These three elements offer different types of a strand of cultural tourism linked to the world of industrial and handicraft production, especially where there are proofs and experiences of this kind of business, that transmit stories of artisans and entrepreneurs of great interest. The literature has also described three possible and different ways of conceiving industrial tourism: the first one, defined as “heritage marketing”, is aimed at the conservation and development of material assets; the second one, defined as “functionalist”, focuses on the company as an economic and cultural subject; the third one, defined as “educational marketing oriented” brings to disclosure and dissemination of new business models, also with a massive use of multimedia tools. Starting from these premises, this paper gives a specific look into an experimental project, started in 2018 and still in progress, named “Make it in Puglia”, whose aim is creating a regional industrial tourism network. The history of Puglia industrial production was mainly connected with its rural culture evolution, initially made of olive oil, wine, spirit (alcohol), cereals (the province of Capitanata was considered “the breadbasket of Europe”), pasta and tobacco, which still constitute the most important industries in the region, for the export too. The research method of this paper is of qualitative nature, through the use of case studies to analyze in deep the subject of the work. More specifically, a multiple case study approach has been used, through three case belonging to the project “Make it in Puglia”, which is briefly presented in this work, through its technical and operational conditions of operativeness, mainly based on service delivery standards. The three cases have been chosen from a selection of twenty-five entities participating in the experimental project, belonging to various realities as active companies, corporate museums, and industrial heritage sites. The development of the case studies was realized in order to validate two research hypotheses: 1. The potentiality of industrial tourism is much higher as it is more connected with the perceived quality or excellence of the products of the territory, where the offer of industrial tourism is present. 2. The potentiality of industrial tourism is higher when this kind of tourism is based on a series of events or initiatives, which are able to reinforce its experiential dimension. With reference to the first point, starting from the Make it in Puglia project, there is a significant geographic overlap between the production system connected with the territorial excellence (often associated to the “Made in Italy” brand), and the international tourism demand. Industrial tourism and “Made in Italy” are closely connected in the strategic development of tourism in Puglia, and more generally, in Italy. The Italian products are historically associated with excellent quality, high specialization and differentiation, elegance and coming from famous traditional Italian industries. The case studies confirm that the protagonists of the “Made in Italy” manufacturing sector and those of the “Italian incoming” sector should multiply the synergistic actions to make the most of the common markets. These considerations seem to be very appropriate also for the Puglia region, which in the last years has developed its own tourism offer, through the promotion of its multiple landscapes and a vast natural, cultural and social heritage. Considering the second research hypothesis, this permits to develop the literature approach of the three ways of industrial tourism, considering a possiblt fourth way for it, strictly linked to the “experiential economy”, applied, in this case to tourism. The event or the initiative connected with the industrial tourism proposal becomes the tool of the experiential tourism, essential part of the quality of the tourist offer, able to offer to the visitors integrated methods of sensorial, emotional, cognitive, behavioral and relational involvement. The case studies of this work seem to confirm also this second research hypothesis. Through the development of these two hypotheses, the article describes the main outcomes of the experimental project “Make it in Puglia”. The three cases studies show some good possibilities for the development of industrial tourism in Puglia and more generally in the regions of Southern Italy. They also confirm the need to create a structured experiential tourism industry, through the creation or enhancement of events and initiatives, like exhibitions, guides tours and emotional tours. Also a specific creation of museum spaces inside or in accordance with the companies involved in industrial tourism projects could be represent a good opportunity of development. Finally, the networking among the actors involved in industrial tourism and in cultural tourism appears as a winning strategy for a quality tourism offer.