HOTELS.GENERATIONS.STORIES

At the centre of the audio lounge is the family, the very heart of tourism in South Tyrol. The local tourism landscape is still dominated by family businesses. What are the personal (hi)stories that led them to enter this trade? How do individual family members cope with living and working together in jointly-run tourist establishments? What feelings, memories and fears do they associate with the handover of a business from generation to generation?

These and other questions are answered in the Touriseum’s audio lounge by the protagonists themselves. Various hosts at eight different audio stations recount their daily lives in family-run tourist businesses. In each case we hear from two generations involved in a hotel, pension or room-letting in South Tyrol. The generation that built up the establishment in the 1950s or 1960s, and the generation that today must decide whether or not to continue with the family business, both describe their very personal view of the trade. Together they give a picture of the effects on South Tyrolean families of their entering the tourist industry and how it still influences the everyday life of individual generations to this day.