by Bert Archer
Last updated: 1:30 PM ET, Mon September 29, 2025
One of the themes of the opening day of the WTTC’s 2025 summit in Rome today has been what Italian Minister of Tourism Daniela Santanchè described in her opening remarks as "undertourism."
People talk a lot about the problems of overtourism, she said, “but 96 percent of Italy actually suffers from undertourism."
Picking up on the aspects of overtourism that will be familiar to anyone who has visited an overtouristed place like Rome or Florence, even in those cities, it is only the most famous sights that are actually overtouristed. Want to see the Trevi Fountain? Be prepared to wade through a thousand people to get to throw your coin in. But if you want to explore neighbourhoods like Trastevere, or Garbatella, or even the spectacular Capitoline Museum with its equestrian bronze of Marcus Aurelius, there are no crowds.
Former and now interim CEO of the WTTC, Gloria Guevara, herself a former Mexican minister of tourism, picked up on the theme, as did the secretary general-elect of the UN’s World Tourism Organization, Shaika Nasser Al Nowais in a later panel discussion, emphasizing the need to redistribute tourism to less popular parts of otherwise overtouristed nations like Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands.
“Shedding light on rural villages in Italy,” said Shaika Al Nowais in a panel discussion with Guevara and Santanchè, “this is something I'd like to focus on a spare of my mandate. To certify a lot of villages all over the world. I was just in Argentina and had the chance to meet the governors of some of the best tourist villages and heard the impact certification of these villages.”
Guevara then pointed out that the idea of certifying and supporting tourist villages, which Italy is also focusing on with the much-applauded patronage of Italy’s fascist prime minister Georgia Meloni, who also spoke, came from Mexico, whose Pueblos Mágicos program has been running since 2001.
Trying to change the script from the downsides of mass tourism captured by the increasingly popular term “overtourism” by bruiting its opposite is a natural move by what is after all an industry association, but if the result is following in the footsteps of Mexico, and Portugal, whose own former Secretary of State for Tourism, Rita Marques, discussed the same issue at a previous WTTC summit, then it seems that the powers that be directing the future of global tourism may indeed be on the right track.
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