After the pandemic. A 4.0 model for the recovery of the Cultural Tourism

Tourism has been progressively characterized to an increasingly marked extent by two important transformation processes: one relating to the broader number of subjects who aspire to create a travel experience; the other connected to the increasingly experiential nature of the travel. The current health emergency linked to the spread of the Covid19 virus has deeply modified this trend, which has been increasing over the past twenty years. The need to guarantee the health safe of travellers has today and in the future a first-rate impact not only on the conditions for traveling, but also on the destinations of the trips. The core of the tourist offer even immediately before the pandemic: cities of art, trips organized for groups, stays in large residences and holiday villages, offers of "indoor" places such as museums, churches, royal and noble residences, all of them today are experiencing a profound and unprecedented crisis due to the difficulty of managing significant problems related to safe access. On the other side, the necessary health measures are fostering the increase of a different tourist experience model more oriented towards innovative trends, closely related to cultural and landscape use. Consequently, what todays, even rightly, still perceived as an element with a devastating impact for the entire national economic system related to tourism, the same may represent the opportunity to generate a push towards experiential directions underestimated in their potential, despite there are successful practices in almost all top-level European tourism contexts. An opportunity to clear customs especially those territories and those tour operators in inland areas (but not only...), which had already started a process of enhancement initially aimed at a more niche audience, but which could now represent an important strategic resource not only for them, as it would be able to generate significant development in areas often facing depopulation. This paper identifies and discusses the traits that characterize some good practices of slow tourism offered by operators in the Apulian and Lucanian regions, as well as the critical issues that hinder the conditions of recovery, albeit difficult and partial.