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FIAB, the Italian Environment and Bicycle Federation, by analyzing the data from Germany, has photographed a new situation of the cycle paths of our beautiful country, inviting all institutions and local bodies to reflect on the many opportunities that cycle tourism can offer.
Almost 300,000 cycle tourists crossed the Alps last year to discover our country by bicycle, thus making Italy the second favorite foreign destination for Germans.
These data emerge from the report ADFC Bicycle Travel Analysis 2022 developed by ADFC, Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrrad-Club, the German association equivalent to FIAB.
In 2021, of the 4 million German cycle tourists, 22% are those who have chosen a destination across the border and Italy was found to be the favorite destination of 33% of those who cycle abroad, immediately after Austria (36%).
France placed third with 14%, followed by the Netherlands with 11.2% and Switzerland with 11.1%.
The forecasts for this year are also quite encouraging: 68% of Germans who travel by bike have already planned a trip on two wheels and, of these, 26% has chosen a European destination outside Germany.
Moving the focus even deeper and analyzing the motivations that influence the planning of the bike trip and the choice of destination, we find that the 71% of the interviewees choose the place based on the attractions along the route, the 70% for road safety and the 66% on the feasibility of the itinerary.
"The data from the ADFC report once again shows the enormous economic opportunity of cycle tourism for our country, an opportunity which, to be fully seized, requires welcoming territories with bike friendly services for those who decide to visit them on horseback ” commented Alessandro Tursi, president of FIAB-Italian Environment and Bicycle Federation, adding that “Cycle tourism does not end with cycle paths, understood as protected spaces but separated from everything else, but begins from the railway stations as intermodal hubs between bicycles and collective transport and continues inside the cities, where the main places of interest of the our unparalleled historical-artistic heritage. There are no rigid classifications: cycle tourism really only works where citizens want and can use the bike even for daily travel”
Another important topic concerns the autonomous province of Trento: cross-referencing the data from the ADFC report with the results detected by the Autonomous Province of Trento, it turned out that: on the 450 km of Trentino cycle routes, in 2021, as many as 2,500,000 passages were recorded for 50,000,000 km cycled (which in energy terms is equivalent to 3,600,000 liters of petrol and 8,000,000 tonnes of CO2 save yourself).
And, as stated by Mario Tonina, vice-president of the Autonomous Province of Trento, the cycle paths in Trentino bring, according to recent estimates, a related industries of approximately 110 million euros per year.
The development of a structured network with well-defined quality parameters, such as that of Trentino, would therefore represent an added value for the entire national territory as an attractor of foreign, but also Italian, cycle tourism flows considering among other things that, according to research of the University of Insubria in 2020 of which FIAB was a partner, 57% of our compatriots preferred abroad as a destination for a cycling holiday.