Travel in Italy

The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) 2024 Economic Impact Research (EIR) has revealed Italy’s Travel & Tourism sector contributed €215BN, representing 10.5% of Italy’s total economic output last year, underscoring the sector’s prominence as a backbone of the Italian economy. The sector also proved a significant source of employment in 2023, breaking all records generating nearly 185,000 new jobs, raising the total to 2.97MN nationwide, representing one in every eight jobs across the country.

Sunday day-trippers to Venice flashing their €5 entry ticket QR code to get through the turnstiles at the city’s main access points look bemused when football supporters simply show their match tickets instead. Attending a sporting event just happens to be one of the exemptions in the opaque regulations behind what locals see as an attempt to turn their town into a living museum.

Packed bars with carousing revelers spilling onto clogged streets. Takeaway booze swigged by drunken tourists and students. Earsplitting volumes in once quiet residential neighborhoods long after midnight.

Airbnb execs have used the phrase “expanding beyond the core” to mean launching new products and services for guests and hosts, and also their hope to lift growth beyond the company’s main five markets: The U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, and France.

With four official languages yet a distinct sense of national identity, Switzerland is a mix of cultures and at the same time innately Swiss – and that goes for its cuisine, too.

Don’t be deceived by the opulent Renaissance palaces, the gold jewelry shining from Ponte Vecchio’s storefronts and the high-end brands lined up on Via Tornabuoni – Florence doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Julie Williams, 60, a semi-retired woman living in Devon, England, who has used HomeExchange more than 100 times over the last decade to travel the world. The website helps facilitate accommodation exchanges between 150,000 users in 145 countries. Williams estimates she's done about 140 exchanges since joining the site.

Just as sports obsessives will travel to Paris this summer for the Olympics, pop music lovers with a penchant for camp will travel to Malmö for the Eurovision Song Contest.

Europe’s legendary libraries rank among some of the world’s most famous buildings.

Michelin revealed its top picks for hotels in Italy, using its new hotel “key” system. Only a small number of hotels made the grade.

Padua, in northern Italy's Veneto region, is the site of one of the world’s greatest art treasures that should be on every art lover’s bucket list. The Scrovegni Chapel houses the extraordinary 14th-century fresco cycle by Giotto that covers all the walls and ceilings. Despite having such a masterpiece and being a lovely small city, filled with history, culture and culinary delights, Padua is far less touristy than other Italian other art cities like Florence, Rome or nearby Venice. It’s a real hidden gem. And, at just 25 miles from Venice and easy to reach from Marco Polo airport, Padua is an easy day trip or addition to a Venice itinerary.

It was the small and enigmatic Berlengas archipelago that drew us to Peniche harbour. Peniche, 60 miles north of Lisbon, is famous for its surfing beaches, but the islands off its coast often get overlooked. Every morning a couple of hardy passenger boats bounce over eight miles of waves from the peninsula of Peniche to Berlenga Grande. We took our seats on deck between sacks of onions and oranges and, flecked with sea-spray and followed by flocks of screaming gulls, we watched green hills emerge from blue waves ahead. At the port, the goods are unloaded with gulls wheeling and cawing overhead.

I hadn’t heard of Pesaro before my ex-flatmate sent me there in summer 2018. I was writing a book at the time, and Giulia reckoned the best place for me to do such work was in her grandad’s old flat, a modest unit in a block put up in 1946, during the short reign of Umberto II. It had lain empty since her nonno – Dottor Spinicci – died of liver failure, having failed to take his own medicine.

One of the most popular Las Vegas casino resorts is turning 25, so what better time to reveal a $1.5 billion face-lift?

Emirates is famed for its extravagant service onboard its current fleet of Boeing 777s and Airbus A380s. It’s therefore little surprise that expectations are high for its incoming A350s – an aircraft that has been years in the making.

As we get ever closer to jetting off on summer holidays, it’s sadly important to remember that not everyone you meet on your travels will be well-intentioned.

Ever dreamed of spending a night in the Ferrari Museum in Maranello, Italy, tucked in a bed crafted with the same leather as Ferrari car seats? What’s more, you’ll be surrounded by 110 elite trophies and encircled by the Ferrari cars that won those accolades and feel the speed of the Ferrari 296GTB on a private ride on the Pista di Fiorano, Ferrari’s private racetrack.

Eric and Christina Schwendeman's relationship got serious the day he brought up retirement.

Dubai, situated in one of the world’s driest regions, was hit with a second bout of heavy rains and strong winds this week — just two weeks after the desert metropolis was covered in a year’s worth of rain in the span of 12 hours. 

Nothing can ruin a vacation like being the victim of a pickpocketing scam. Throughout Europe specifically, a new study shows that there are some destinations where theft is more prevalent than others.

Over the past 90 years three generations of the Cipriani family have developed their business into an international hospitality brand, with restaurants, landmarked event spaces, luxury residential, hotels and private membership clubs throughout the most prestigious cities in the world. Locations include Venice, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, Monte Carlo, Ibiza, Mexico City, Dubai, Riyadh, Las Vegas and the upcoming Punta del Este, Milan, Jeddah, Istanbul and Doha.