How to survive in the Italian Jungle of Holiday House, Holiday Apartment, B&B, Agriturismi, Hotel, Camping, Glamping ecc…

Italy is an amazing place where you can spend your vacation and for sure we will manage to dust ourselves down in time to welcome visitors again in 2021! But the Italian hospitality industry and the touristic offer can’t be immediately understood by the foreigners (and often by the Italians). What is simple outside of this wonderful Country, here becomes complicated and with hundreds of restrictions… but no worries!

If you want to find out your perfect Italian holiday break what you really need it is a different kind of guide. On the web you can find thousands of photos about all the Italian incredible places, the amazing historical squares or about the greatest food experiences ever. But if you really want to spend your holiday here, in my opinion, you have to know some key-information about us. I use to welcome many visitors yearly in the holiday houses I manage and I have noted that most of them don’t know really the accommodation they have booked, the region in which they have decided to spend the holiday and what they can do (or can’t do) in the area. I always take care of them at my best and this is why I am writing you today about the many Italian rules regarding the hospitality accommodation world.  

Each Region in Italy can rule the travel sector autonomously, but we can find a common thread among these rules. For example in my birthplace, the hilly region around Turin called Piedmont (and more or less in the rest of the Country), you can choose your accommodation among the different kinds listed below:

1. “Strutture ricettive alberghiere”

We can translate this expression as “Hospitality-Hotel Accommodation”. Under this category you can find the traditional accommodation types: Hotel, Multi-building hotel and tourist residences.

• “Strutture ricettive extralberghiere”

Under this cover “Hospitality- Non Hotel Accomodation” you can find some of the most popular accommodation:  Bed & breakfast, guest house and inns, holiday house and apartment/ residence, “Case per ferie”, Country house, Innovative accommodation solutions (strange words for the most on trend accommodation of the last five years for ex. glamping location), “Alloggi vacanza”

• “Strutture ricettive alpinistiche”

I really don’t know why our government needs to put into a specific category the most self evident accommodation types: the ones based on the mountains. The “Rifugi alpini” are quite similar to the “Rifugi escursionistici”, on our Alps you can also find “Rifugi non gestiti” (unmanaged Refuge) and Bivacchi (campfire).

• “Strutture ricettive rurali”

“Rural hospitality accommodation” means that in Italy you can sleep in the farms: they are called Aziende agrituristiche if they are equipped with some bedrooms or some apartments dedicated to tourists; or you can experience the “Ospitalità rurale famigliare” staying in the farmer’s houses.

• “Complessi ricettivi all’aria aperta – Campeggi e Villaggi turistici”

Campings, Touristic Villages, not traditional campings

This sorting has been theorized by the Italian lawgiver mainly for the owners of the hospitality structures. But these rules reflect their effects also on the travellers who choose to stay for exemple into an hotel or B&B. After reading my unsolicited tips I hope your decisions about your Italian holidays will be more informed: you will never decide again to sleep into a B&B instead an hotel because you think that the first category is “family run”, “surrounded by nature” or because in the Italian B&B you can always find a home made breakfast! Why? Because for being classified as B&B it is not required that the business is run by a family (and friendly it can’t be run by a family), it is not required for being a B&B to have the building in the wild nature and…buckle up… the B&B owners can’t cook home made breakfasts! So follow my trip into the hospitality Italian world! Come to visit Italy, and maybe you can start your trip from Piedmont: you will immediately realise just what you had been missing out on, and why your Italian friends had always berated you for not discovering one of the most surprising and welcoming parts of Italy. Continue to travel in Italy with an increased critical capacity to discern reality from fantasy but with best chance to see your travel dreams come true!