Exploring decision making processes in building Italy-based package tours: insights from Russian travel agents and tour operators

Based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 127 buyers from the Russian Federation, this paper illustrates several critical and peculiar issues of decision making processes by Russian travel agents and tour operators in building Italy-based (and more specifically Emilia Romagna-based) tour packages. The findings indicate that Italy as a tourism destination displays several major strengths such as the variety of its offer (featuring history and culture as well as eno-gastronomic assets) and the lifestyle and hospitality of its people. Moreover it seems that after the first Italy-based package tour (that mainly includes the classic Italian arts cities and Emilia-Romagna as well) most of Russian tourists prefer to go back to Italy and either buy a tour featuring different destinations or construct a trip by themselves. Major weaknesses of the Italian supply include the poor value for money especially on the Riviera Romagnola, the lack of professionalism of local tourism operators (e.g., the scarce proficiency in the Russian language or the delay in replying to e-mail and inquiries), the inadequacy of websites, the unreliability of Italian standards of hotel classifications. The aforementioned issues are more relevant for the Southern part than for the Northern part of Italy for which a focus is provided by analyzing the Emilia-Romagna region (top Italian destination for Russian tourists in Italy). Last but not least, we found that the purchasing behaviour of Russian travel agents and tour operators is mediated by their direct experience – as tourists – of Italy. Accordingly it appears that more effort should be direct towards the construction of effective educational tours for perspective buyers.