AITO offers Turin tourism boost

TURIN’S tourism chiefs are investing around £300,000 on the AITO conference later this month in an effort to put their city more firmly on the short-break map.

Tourism Turin UK representative Gaby Marcon said the conference, on November 22-26, will be important in raising the profile of the city.

“When it comes to Italy’s second cities, Turin is outperformed by Naples, Verona and Sorrento because no one knows anything about it,” said Marcon.

Turin had just over 80,000 UK visitors in 2000.

“We have organised post-conference tours for AITO members and hope there will be a big take-up because this will be a chance to show the city to specialist operators such as Cresta, Bridge, Travelscene and Magic of Italy,” she added.

Up to 200 operators are expected to attend the conference, which also marks AITO’s 25th anniversary.

Marcon said one of Turin’s key selling points is that it is the gateway to several popular ski resorts, which are just one hour away.

There are many golf courses near the city and a lot of royal residences, some of which have been named as UNESCO World Heritage Sites and opened to the public.

Turin is Italy’s only Baroque city and has one of the three most important contemporary art museums in Europe. It also has the second most important Egyptian Museum, after Cairo, and Italy’s only Museum of Cinema.

The city is served twice-daily by Ryanair from Stansted and daily by Meridiana from Gatwick.