National Tourist Guide Association now lashing out at Giro d'Italia: ad featuring Sagan is senseless and offensive

TheNational Association of Tourist Guides (ANGT) is back in the news and this time it is taking it out on the Giro d’Italia. In fact, the ANGT did not like the Giro’s promotional video, which we told you about a few days ago: in the commercial, filmed entirely at the Pinacoteca di Brera, multiple world champion Peter Sagan is seen in the role of an art expert tourist who, every time the guide explains a work of art, anticipates the professional’s description by visibly irritating her. Eventually, a companion in his group asks him how many times he has already done the tour (meaning the Pinacoteca tour), and the Slovak cyclist responds by saying that it is his first time (alluding to the fact that Sagan will participate in the Giro d’Italia for the first time in his career this year).

An advertisement that, of course, was meant to be sympathetic and to showcase some of the paintings in the Pinacoteca (the guide illustrates in quick succession Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus, Raphael’s The Marriage of the Virgin, and Canova’s Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker ), while also investing the Giro d’Italia with an interesting role in promoting tourism (since it touches on many beautiful places Italy, which benefit from the Giro), but evidently in the ANGT’s opinion it is outrageous to make irony about museums and guides: according to the association, the video is “highly offensive and detrimental to the entire professional category of Tourist Guides, not even gratifying to the protagonist (Slovak cyclist Peter Sagan), downgraded from super champion to arrogant and disrespectful tourist.”

But that’s not all: the ANGT would in fact like to see the video disappear and in a note calls for its “immediate deletion with a public apology.”“we are in an Italian museum, in front of stupendous works of art,” the statement reads (where, moreover, the name of the museum is never mentioned, nor is it said what the works are), “and Peter Sagan, without even taking off a black military beret from his head, repeatedly interrupts a guide in front of a group of tourists: he anticipates what he is about to say, moreover correctly, word for word. As if the guide, who moves in a caricatured manner in the film, is only dishing out obvious obviousness. And so he doesn’t. The icing on the cake? To a tourist who asks him in amazement if he has done the tour before, Peter Sagan replies no, that this is the first time. Finally he embraces the tourist and walking through the museum, he puts on the role of tour guide: ’You should know that the Giro Ciclistico d’Italia was first raced back in 1909... ’. Of course really anyone can be a Tour Guide in Italy, can’t they? Not after university degrees in art, architecture, history, geography and literature, master’s degrees and study trips, refresher courses, ever-new exhibitions to prepare for, years and years of experience and in contact with the public, after above all having passed a State Examination for professional qualification. There is cause for deep indignation, damaged in image at a time of extreme difficulty for the entire tourism sector, which is practically on its knees.”

In short, ANGT sees this commercial very poorly: “When will we really stop with the commonplace of the boring and know-it-all Cicero?” wonders Adina Persano, ANGT president. “We Tourist Guides are not like that at all,” Persano concludes in a bizarre motion of self-congratulation: “we are educated, elegant and well-groomed, we have studied a lot and continue to do so every day, we master foreign languages and we mostly come to tourism from the university and art world. In fact, our visits turn out to be true performances, welcomed and applauded. We seduce tourists in the ancient sense of the word: we take them with us. Along a cultural path, discovering other worlds, often their true and intimate feelings.”

And to think that only a few weeks ago, the ANGT had written a letter to President Conte in which it proposed to make tour guides available to museums, archives, libraries and various bodies, to put the guides’ skills at the disposal of public bodies during the period of “forced rest.” The proposal, of course, was immediately stigmatized and considered “indecent” by other industry associations, which had immediately disassociated themselves from ANGT’s proposal. In short, for the ANGT evidently an ironic commercial is grossly detrimental to the dignity of tour guides, while proposing to work, due to “forced rest,” in archives, museums and libraries (where there are other professionals who have studied, trained specifically and continue to update themselves for those roles) is probably fine. One also wonders how they are doing at ANGT these weeks given that, at a time when tour guides are in severe crisis (and many of them have lost their jobs), the association manages to find time to deal with a clearly funny and harmless video made to promote the Tour of Italy through art. And who knows, that video might even manage to provide work for the guides themselves, given the visibility given to the Pinacoteca di Brera and given the huge following the Giro enjoys.

National Tourist Guide Association now lashing out at Giro d'Italia: ad featuring Sagan is senseless and offensive

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