Alta Gamma: synergies between hotel hospitality, culture and creative industries in cities of art

The ‘Alta Gamma’ project aims to highlight, structure and make replicable the synergies between hotel hospitality, culture and the creative industry in the city of art. Venice, with its recent history and also with its current problems, is the ideal field to explore the potential of this extraordinary intersection of human, intellectual, environmental, material and economic resources.

The intervention is thus characterised by a philosophy that is both cross-sectoral and specialised. This preliminary analysis, which is the result of research work carried out by a plurality of professors and researchers of the Art and Culture Management Laboratory of the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, was tested during a series of meetings and workshops that the operational partnership promoted with the business partnership during the planning phase.

The project partner companies not only grasped and deepened the proposed analysis, but also enriched it with an incredible series of insights and proposals that were translated into interventions within this project.

In addition to the university, the binder is made up of one of the city’s most important cultural foundations and companies specialising in the transfer of human, intellectual and cultural capital. It is therefore an aggregation of competences that have been indicated by many as crucial to meet the joint needs of rationalising tourist flows, enhancing the cultural heritage and maintaining important but sustainable manufacturing activities in the city of art.

The response to these needs that we wish to support here passes through a decisive rethinking of cultural tourism, in particular of what we define here as ‘high-end’ tourism, aware of the fact that in addition to being increased, it must also be appropriately distributed throughout the year.

In order to achieve these important objectives, the intervention contributes to the development of innovations in the cultural offer that can better respond to a demand for culture that has greatly increased in recent decades, but has also changed considerably in its motivations. Starting, therefore, from the consideration that the act of consumption is not only the result of a hedonistic and narcissistic satisfaction, but is the expression of a social forma mentis, the desire arises to deepen, through this intervention, the channels of influence that intervene in this process and the consequent development that these choices can determine.