Buy Wedding in Italy: A Great Opportunity for Wedding Professionals
By Massimo Terracina
Two intense days full of meetings buyer/seller and training moments have enhanced the importance of the “V Buy Wedding in Italy”, the B2B workshop devoted to the wedding in the “Bel Paese”.
One of the main outputs of the event has been the absolute value of the segment in the Italian incoming tourism.
“Based on the “First report of the Italian observatory of destination wedding tourism” results, the 2019 impact on Italian tourism economy is estimated at 486.9 million euros (almost half a billion),” says Bianca Trusiani, president of the Technical Committee of BWI.
That figure is the result of 9,018 weddings of foreign couples, representing an increase of 2.1% compared to 2018 figures. Weddings have lured into Italy 440,102 foreigners (18,036 grooms and brides) and 422,065 wedding guests. The room nights count is 1,783,136, as for 137,081 couple stays and 1,646,055 guest stays. The average spending to get married in Italy is 53.984 euro.
“The future is on the rise and presents promising scenarios,” adds Valerio Schonfeld, organizer of the event- “2020 is expected to stage 46.4% more weddings, according to what the wedding planners have in stock, but anyway everyone is forecasting more business towards Italy.”
Sandro Pappalardo, one of the three member of the board of directors of ENIT (The Italian Tourism Promotion board, came to Bologna to attend the event, bringing some interesting data and witnessing, with his presence, during the talk show time, the attention dedicated to wedding tourism from the supreme Italian tourism body.
“There have been 94 million international travelers in 2018 who spent 41,7 billion euros (+6,5% to 2017)” said Pappalardo. “The interest of ENIT is based not only on institutional reasons, but on the average stay, 7 days vs 4,1 of the general tourist, and 178,00 euro vs 107,00 euro of an average day expenditure. Moreover, the months of June and October are the most required, which means a great focus on seasonal adjustment, in other words to fill also the shoulder season.”
According to the “ENIT Study Department” based on Banca d’ Italia data - added Pappalardo - the “top 5” countries, in terms of wedding spending, are USA (59,4 million €), Brazil (41,7 million €), Canada (20,3 million €), UK (14,7 million €) and Australia (14,1 million €).”
An interesting seminar/talk show was about the new certification procedure of Italian wedding planner, “professional challenge: wedding planner D.O.C.”, mainly dealing with how to be acknowledged as a certified wedding planner, “conditio sine qua non” to fight the improvisation of a very sensitive profession, a procedure finalized due to the commitment of Clara Trama, the promoter of the initiative to the political establishment and President of the Italian wedding planner association.
Other engaging seminars and talk shows were about “the maximization of the spectacular effect of the wedding” were staged by Architects Angelo Garini and Andrea Riccio, “same sex wedding” by Gionata Russo and Roseli Riva, “the buyers selection” by Adriana Miori, “needs from the international market” bt Natalia Kulikova, “total look of the bride” by Francesca Ragone, “wedding in the museum”, “territorial marketing: new generation” that staged Stefano Crugnola, Carmen Bizzarri, Sandro Pappalardo and, last but not least, some tips on the
“food aspects” by Costantino Cipolla, Paolo Corvo and Massimiliano Montanari.
As many as 37 wedding planner from all over the world participated as buyers, giving life to more than 2.000 preset meetings with sellers.
