Italy highlights its Thermal Tourism extravaganza in Les Thermalies in Paris

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

“Les Thermalies”, the water & well-being exhibition, was recently held in Paris from Jan 19 till Jan 22, 2023. During the exhibition, Italy’s Minister of Tourism (MITUR), Daniela Santanchè, inaugurated the Paris pavilion which ran the motto “MITUR will support thermal tourism.”

The pavilion was curated by the ICE-Agency for the promotion of Italy on the international level with an aim to relaunch Italian thermal tourism.

The Italian delegation was represented by the Minister of Tourism, Daniela Santanché; the President of Federterme (the Italian Spa Federation), Massimo Caputi; the Director of Paris Ice, Luigi Ferrelli; and the Managing Director of Italian National Tourist Board, Ivana Jelinic, who presented the Italian thermal tourist offer and the ItalCares platform created and promoted by Federterme with the co-financing of the Ministry of Tourism. Also with them was the Italian Ambassador in Paris, Emanuela D’Alessandro.

Minister Santanchè stated, “I would like to thank the Italian ambassador in France for the work she is doing and has done for Italy. I would also like to thank the French, a people I love very much, especially since it chooses Italy as its second tourist destination.”

She added, “I am proud to be here today because the Ministry of Tourism has an important task which is to help the players in the sector do better and more, to set the conditions for which all players can work at their best. I thank the president of Federterme, Caputi who gave me this opportunity because I wanted, as Minister of Tourism, to be alongside a sector that has suffered very significantly during the years of the pandemic and which, today, my ministry must absolutely support.”

“Italy is only eighth as far as wellness tourism is concerned and we are not happy about it, because we want to progress since spa tourism was discovered by the ancient Romans,” remarked Santanchè adding that ‘we were, therefore, the first nation that had understood the benefit of the spa. Since it is a sector that we exported many years ago, we must re-appropriate it, returning again to first place in this ranking”.

The minister concluded by speaking of the government’s objectives, which must “do two things: first, it must believe in it; second: it must put those who work in this sector in the best possible conditions and help them to move forward”.

“Minister Santanchè’s presence here today is a very clear testimony of the attention with which she intends to promote the tourism sector in our country in a very important market for us which is France,” said Emanuela D’Alessandro, Italian ambassador in Paris .

“The spas represent one of the points of excellence of Made in Italy,” said Massimo Caputi, president of Federterme. He added, “Italy’s great success at Les Thermalies proves the goodness of the project on medical tourism and well-being created by Federterme and financed by the Ministry of Tourism.”

“The spas make it possible to attract tourist market shares even in low season period of the year, allowing for an equal distribution of flows throughout the country. Italy performed well for the month of December just ended, the overall online bookings of rooms was 37.6 per cent against 18.8 per cent in the same month in 2021 and the thermal sector was perfectly in line with the national average, reaching a saturation rate of 37.5 percent of December availability”, commented Ivana Jelinic, CEO of Enit.

“Analyzing the Christmas holidays from December 19, 2022, to January 8, 2023, 35.1% of the available rooms were reserved for spa, against 18.4% in the same period 2022/2021. In this case, the performance of the thermal product exceeds, albeit slightly, the national average result which is 32.5%,”concluded Jelinic.

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