Hi, Valentina, and thanks for your comments! I totally understand that the title of your article was geared toward your readers, I just wasn’t expecting Italy to rank 6th overall when I saw it was “tops” for something. I definitely appreciate what Italy Magazine does, and regularly feature links to your great news stories in my weekly news round-ups. I’m a fan.

It really is too bad that the Italian tourism board is so unresponsive (I’ve heard this complaint from several travel writers, so I know it’s not just me), but I do think that to a certain extent they know they don’t really have to bend over backwards to help travel writers like me. They know people will still come to Italy, whether the Italian tourism office talks to me or not. It would be great to have someone there I could contact, though, for questions and information that I have trouble finding. Maybe when I finally move there I’ll just go to the office and sit there until they talk to me…

Ciao,
Jessica

]]> http://www.italylogue.com/about-italy/italy-6th-on-2009-nation-brands-index.html/comment-page-1#comment-28827 Valentina Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:46:19 +0000 http://www.italylogue.com/about-italy/italy-6th-on-2009-nation-brands-index.html#comment-28827 Hi Jessica, Great article and good points although I don't think it is exactly fair to call our title misleading. I accept that, in the title, we focused on the aspect that is most relevant for our wider public and the "winning" aspect for Italy in that index. It is always tricky to know where to draw the line with regards to criticism and reporting all aspcts of life in Italy. We all live here so we could complain about stuff pretty much all day long! We do deal with the wider issues surrounding life, politics and culture in Italy and are happy to touch on them as far as is possible within the context of a predominantly lifestyle magazine. For example, we are one of the few publications that mentioned the death of Alda Merini, talk about the Messina tragedy and took a position on the fallacy of focusing on a mega-bridge project, highlight issues with governance, etc. We hope to do more of this in the future. Your criticism of the Italian tourism board is quite right, we have had many complain about this. Although we have to admit that we have managed to get in touch with them (you just need to accept that they will not respond very quickly and you have to try more times to get through - I will pass on your comments next week as we are meeting with them in London). Keep up the great work!

Hi Jessica,

Great article and good points although I don’t think it is exactly fair to call our title misleading. I accept that, in the title, we focused on the aspect that is most relevant for our wider public and the “winning” aspect for Italy in that index.
It is always tricky to know where to draw the line with regards to criticism and reporting all aspcts of life in Italy. We all live here so we could complain about stuff pretty much all day long!

We do deal with the wider issues surrounding life, politics and culture in Italy and are happy to touch on them as far as is possible within the context of a predominantly lifestyle magazine. For example, we are one of the few publications that mentioned the death of Alda Merini, talk about the Messina tragedy and took a position on the fallacy of focusing on a mega-bridge project, highlight issues with governance, etc. We hope to do more of this in the future.

Your criticism of the Italian tourism board is quite right, we have had many complain about this. Although we have to admit that we have managed to get in touch with them (you just need to accept that they will not respond very quickly and you have to try more times to get through – I will pass on your comments next week as we are meeting with them in London).

Keep up the great work!

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