From Overtourism To No Tourism

Divertimento Group’s Stop Overtourism Movement born in 2017 was gaining steam and getting visibility online and in the travel press. It was a small, but powerful movement and many movers and shakers in the tourism sector were climbing on our bandwagon. In December 2019 our special Give The Residents a Voice experiences in small towns and villages throughout Italy were chosen as the New Year’s Raffle Grand Prize for Impact Travel Alliance, an international, sustainable tourism leader. The happy winner of that raffle could never have known that he would not be able to use his free ticket and that no one could even predict when he might be able to enjoy his Italian itineraries. That was in January 2020 and we are in November and we still do not know when Americans will be traveling again to Europe.

No one could ever have imagined (not even a SciFi writer) that the entire country of Italy would be closed to outsiders only a few months from the raffle date and that Italian citizens would be locked down and locked in.

Then, the rest of the planet followed.

It is chilling to read the article I wrote in March for Skift.

We will be back and in the meantime wish you a safe end of 2021 - surrounded by the very few people who you care about.