Seven months of events, eleven regions crossed and one great mission: to demonstrate that you can travel differently. The seventeenth edition of the national festival of responsible tourism closes with numbers that tell much more than simple growth. This year too greenMe was proud to be a media partner of this extraordinary adventure.
Over 23 thousand people participated in the XVII edition of IT.A.CÀ Festival of Responsible Tourism, spread between June and November 2025 in 230 events across 11 Italian regions. A number that not only tells of curiosity towards different forms of travel, but a real hunger for experiences that make sense, that leave something good behind them.
This year’s theme, “Guarding the Future – From today’s choices, the face of tomorrow”, was the common thread for 20 stages that were able to translate this vision into their territories. From Lombardy to Sicily, from Trentino Alto Adige to Puglia, each stage interpreted in its own way what it means to take care of the places we live in and pass through.
Traveling slowly, traveling true
What is striking about IT.A.CÀ are not just the numbers – impressive though they are, with 7 million users reached on social media and almost 200 volunteers involved – but the type of experience it offers. Here we are not talking about hit-and-run tourism, selfies in front of monuments and so on. We talk about trekking that takes you into forgotten landscapes, cycle tours that follow the rhythm of your legs and not your engines, of guided tours that make you discover that behind every village there is a story that is worth listening to.
Forest bathing, yoga practices in natural parks, cooking workshops with local producers, concerts in special places: 93 unique destinations – protected areas, UNESCO sites, ancient villages, internal walls – were open to those who wanted to really get to know them. And to do it with respect, without invading them, without consuming them.
The choices that make the difference
The collective energy of those who live in the territories is the true driving force of the festival
– explain Sonia Bregoli and Pierluigi Musarò, co-founders of IT.A.CÀ. And it shows. Each stage considered how to reduce the impact of tourism: low-impact means of transport, valorization of historic railways and cycle paths, widespread and regulated hospitality. These are not just beautiful words, they are concrete practices that demonstrate how tourism can be done without causing devastation.
This year the festival has entered into important new partnerships, such as the one with Borghi Autentici d’Italia, and has renewed consolidated collaborations with AITR (Italian Association of Responsible Tourism) and Legambiente Nazionale. Furthermore, the link with Strade Maestre continues, the outdoor education project which is taking high school students to cross Italy on foot for over a thousand kilometres.
A recognition that matters
The “Migrantour” project, carried out in the main stage of Bologna by Next Generation Italy, received the Cambiare 2025 Award: a national recognition that enhances the principles of the United Nations 2030 Agenda and the work of those who concretely commit to improving their communities.
A clear signal: IT.A.CÀ is not just a festival, it has become a point of reference for all those – associations, tourist operators, local communities, travelers – who believe in a tourism that does not simply take, but which gives value, creates relationships, builds the future.
Guarding means taking care
Sebastiano Venneri, head of Tourism and Territorial Innovation of the national Legambiente, says it clearly:
A small business linked to new tourism is emerging which generates a good economy, weaves the threads of solid relationships, connects active citizens and small local administrations.
It’s not petty romanticism, it’s an alternative economic model that works.
The testimonies of the coordinators of the various stages confirm this. In Mantua we worked on the dialogue between new generations and the memory of the community. In Milan we wanted to go “beyond the postcard city, beyond prejudices and stereotypes”. In San Lorenzo Bellizzi, in Pollino, the festival “helped the town to rediscover itself, uniting roots, hospitality and future”.
Each territory has found its own way of interpreting the theme, but all with the same objective: to demonstrate that safeguarding the future means first and foremost taking care of the present. Of places, of the people who live there, of the stories they keep.
Towards 2026
“Let’s prepare for a great 2026,” says Maurizio Davolio, president of AITR. And you have to believe him. IT.A.CÀ was born in 2009 in Bologna and in these 17 years it has become the first and only festival in Italy dedicated to responsible tourism, also obtaining recognition from the UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organization) in 2018 for excellence and innovation.
This year’s growth – both in numbers and in media and institutional attention – demonstrates that there is a desire for different tourism. A tourism that does not consume territories but enhances them, that does not run away but stays and listens, that does not take selfies but builds relationships.
Ultimately, this is what “guarding the future” means: making choices today that allow the places we love to still exist tomorrow. And to be alive, inhabited, authentic. Not open-air museums, but breathing communities.
