From slow tourism to slow travel: An idea for marginal regions

Abstract

Tourism represents a strategy that can be used to imagine the development of marginal areas. But what type of tourism? Slow tourism is considered in literature and by the main development policies of marginal areas as one of the forms of tourism that best lends itself to the specific context of these territories. There are three factors whose possible relationship and interaction will be studied: tourism, slowness, and marginal areas. In this piece, the matter of marginal areas is not discussed, and it is taken as fact. What is discussed is the combination of slowness and tourism, often identified with the idea of “slow tourism”. The article proposes its own definition of slow tourism, where slowness, as a conscious and alternative attitude, invests in and modifies the economic sector of tourism. We therefore identify the attitudes of slowness that bring meaning to a territorial project, useful to the development (not only financial but also cultural and social) of marginal areas. From tourism, we move on to travel, a free and discovery-based approach, in line with the lessons that slowness can provide.