SLOW TOURISM E NUOVI MEDIA: NUOVE TENDENZE PER IL SETTORE TURISTICO

As of today, blogs and social networks appear to have already changed most common types of inter- actions and of information exchange among people. However, virtual platforms seem to clash with increasingly widespread behaviors which seek for real, non-virtual, experi- ence. If we consider tourism, this dichotomy becomes even more evident: catalogue holidays are disregarded as contemporary traveller progressively acquires an explorative attitude. More and more tourists are attracted by sensory-predominant travel experi- ences, as recent examples in France (Burgundy and Provence) show. How is it possible to observe an increasing tourists’ reliance on technologies while, at the same time, data indicate that tourism is evolving towards more direct-experience-related demands? As both – apparently contradictory – phenomena are analyzed, it turns out that there is no contradiction in fact. Many individual travellers are eager to enjoy a full and unique  Slow tourism e nuovi media 503 touristic experience; they depart and carry their own sensitiveness, expectations and de- sires. By the use of currently available Web-based technology, location-based services and platforms, they can make their own way through the tourism experience, and in do- ing so, they particularly take into account suggestions and storytelling by other travellers who share experiences. The profound need for individual percept and perception that seems to be a widespread driver of present-day tourism is becoming a crowd-shared in- formation flow before, during and after the travel; and it is so in such an ample dimen- sion, that the huge amount of information available, paroxistically updated, on the Web can overwhelm a non-trained user. The overflow of subjectively relevant information re- ported on blogs and other social networks by thousands of users make it objectively dif- ficult to discriminate reliable from unreliable (and sometimes bafflingly banal) informa- tion. The rationale of this research work is the attempt to fine a possible «life-in-com- mon» between individual experience and social-network-based information and knowl- edge about it. How much can new technological forums influence a decision and expe- rience of travel? Who does choose to communicate and live the travel live on the Inter- net? And at last, the landscape and the travel are influenced or not by these new behav- iours of social communication?