Some travel to see places; others travel to find themselves.
Travel is, after all, one of the cornerstones of Western culture: from Ulysses to the present day, people have always crossed the world in search of something more than a mere view.
It is often the past that people seek most when they board a plane. The past of a people, of a nation. But also that of a family.
It is no coincidence that Roots Tourism is now one of the fastest-growing segments of Italian tourism. And one of the least governed as a territorial brand.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates 7.4 million arrivals in Italy in 2026 by people of Italian descent: people coming to find their family’s country of origin. A village in Molise, a surname on a gravestone in Calabria, a recipe handed down over four generations. In 2024, this flow generated 5 billion euros. People of Italian descent worldwide are estimated at 80 million.
The Ministry of Tourism has made Roots Tourism one of the priorities of its 2026 Communication Plan. The PNRR has allocated dedicated investment. The Farnesina has convened 800 mayors. The institutional infrastructure exists. Yet in most cases the narrative product does not.
Today we explore inheritourism together: its nature and its potential.
The roots tourist does not want an itinerary
Those who come to Italy to trace their origins bring expectations that no guidebook can meet. They are not, in fact, looking for a weekend in a medieval village, but for confirmation that they belong. They want to know who the people who shared their surname were, what they produced, how they lived, and what remains of that life in the landscape and traditions of that place.
This is the fundamental difference between inheritourism and ordinary cultural tourism: the visitor already arrives with a potential emotional bond. The territory’s task, then, is not to create interest, but to find a way to honour a bond that already exists. This requires precise narrative work: knowing what can be told authentically about that place, which material traces survive, which figures, trades and stories can be shown.
Italian villages hold 93% of the country’s PDO and PGI certified agri-food products. They have archives, dialects, architecture, rituals and memories that exist nowhere else. Roots tourism bypasses the big cities and heads towards local identities. The problem is that many of these villages have not yet done the work of understanding what they have to tell, to whom, and in what form.
A generic “tour of Italy” is not enough. What is needed is a genuine territorial narrative, built on the specific identity of that place, able to answer the question the visitor brings with them: why am I the way I am, and what of this place is still in me?
The time is now
Inheritourism is not a passing trend but the convergence of three mutually reinforcing trends: (i) the growth of the global genealogy industry, (ii) the rise of the middle classes in countries with strong historical Italian emigration, and (iii) the search for deeper, more personal travel experiences after years of mass tourism.
Those 80 million people of Italian descent around the world are already searching for their origins on their own (through genealogy apps, digitised parish archives or Facebook groups). So they will reach our villages regardless. The question is whether they will find something real waiting for them, or just a bed and breakfast with an Italian flag and a set menu.
The narrative product is built over time, and it requires work that no PNRR funding call can buy on its own: understanding what makes that specific place unique, making it legible to those arriving from afar with very high expectations, and turning it into an experience worth the journey.
Those who begin this work today have an advantage that widens every year. Those who wait for someone else to do it for them give up one of the most loyal tourism segments, with higher spending power and the hardest to win over to another destination.
Because a roots tourist who finds what they were looking for does not go elsewhere the following year. They come back. They put down roots.
New Connections (FAQ)
How do you build a territorial narrative for roots tourism?
It starts from the specific identity of the place, not from the generic tourist catalogue. What are the historic trades, the documented migrations, the figures who shaped the community, the products that bear the imprint of that territory? An effective narrative for roots tourism is built on verifiable primary sources, not on regional stereotypes. It requires the collaboration of archivists, local historians, associations of Italians abroad and tourism operators. The result is not a package: it is a story that can be told in different formats depending on the visitor’s profile.
Is roots tourism sustainable as an economic model for small villages?
Yes, and it has the advantage of being spread across the year. The roots tourist does not necessarily arrive in August: they arrive when they can, with a longer travel horizon and higher average spending than the ordinary tourist, because the trip carries real personal meaning. The 5 billion in economic flow generated in 2024 is spread across every season and across areas that would otherwise receive no tourist attention. For a village in the southern hinterland, capturing even a fraction of this flow can make the difference between abandonment and revival.
How can a village prepare to welcome roots tourism?
Before it even promotes itself, the territory must make accessible what the visitor comes looking for: archives, surnames, family histories, trades, traditions, places of emigration and people able to interpret them. This heritage must then be linked to concrete services, such as genealogical assistance, personalised itineraries, trained guides, experiences tied to local memory and content available to those living abroad too. Branding comes in to give this system a recognisable shape. This is the kind of work in which Bliss steps in on strategy and territorial brand governance, bringing identity, narrative, local operators and promotion into dialogue. Because in roots tourism the destination does not need to invent a story to sell: it needs to organise and make legible the one it already has. When this identity must also translate into the experience and promotion of accommodation facilities, marketing for hospitality and hotels comes into play, connecting territory, content, digital distribution and the ability to generate demand.
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