Fernando Iustini – Camping.it

Ferdinando Iustini is the owner of the Camping.it portal, designed for those who want to find a holiday in a campsite or tourist village in Italy, and of Genial Srl, a company from Martinsicuro (Abruzzo region) which operates as a web agency in the world of tourism and camping. Camping Business recently met him at the latest SUN Beach&Outdoor Style in Rimini to take stock of this anomalous vintage.

CampingBusiness: How did this strange season go for you?
Ferdinando Iustini: With our main activity, which is the Camping.it site, we have registered a growth of over 300% in terms of visits and we have allowed all our customers to increase traffic and booking requests, even if in a somewhat particular year. We were the first company in Italy, ahead of Confcommercio’s Italyhotels.it. Additionally, we were the first to list all the accommodations that accepted the “holiday bonus”, and this was one of the keys to the success of this particular period.

CampingBusiness: What are your other activities? Do you also take care of booking?
Ferdinando Iustini: No, we only forward booking requests or send interested parties to customer links. Apart from the work of pure web agency, we also take care of some Internet sites and we specialize in photography and videos. We offer 360-degree virtual and interactive tours, immersive photography, augmented reality, video and photos with drones and so on.

CampingBusiness: In your opinion, has this moment of extraordinary interest on the part of users translated into a growth for the structures or has the level of curiosity only increased?
Ferdinando Iustini: Those who call from our portals are guided by concreteness. It is clear that the conversion percentage must be calculated, but if all customers renew our contracts it means that we bring something. However, we, and you can also see it from specialized sites that measure performance, are the ones that bring the most visits to Italy. And this is also true abroad, where we are the Italian portal that gives the best results, even if not comparable to those of some foreigners. Our site is in nine languages, while camping advertisements vary in number. Here is the structure that can choose which markets to act on. If a campsite has advertising in ten languages ​​and then a language is missing, it is automatically delivered in English.

CampingBusiness: What kind of reflections do you think there will be on next season given the current worrying situation?
Ferdinando Iustini: It’s too early to say, but this year we started with a lockdown thinking we would all be stuck, then the season slowly started and finally exploded. It’s easy to make a prediction, even if it depends on how things are going to go. Surely after the winter, during which we will have to cohabit with this virus, I think that people will need holidays, especially in summer.

CampingBusiness: What sensations did you get from the latest edition of the SUN Beach&Outdoor Style?
Ferdinando Iustini: It is an event that has reached only 15% of its possibilities, truncated by the fear of being present. This year I found time for an interview, but in the past this would have been impossible. Anyway, the people who came to visit us were all interested, even if they were already our customers.

CampingBusiness: Was it a good idea to organize it anyway?
Ferdinando Iustini: In my opinion, perhaps it could have been avoided, because wanting to do so necessarily led to splits of thought and splits of companies that did different things to avoid coming to the fair. In terms of content, this event was somewhat monopolized by two companies, and in my opinion this is not correct. The most deleterious thing is certainly that many important names are also carrying out other initiatives, I don’t say similar, but that in the long term could become so, ruining something that was a regular appointment. I am about to make it biennial, perhaps extending its duration a little, because the news from year to year are too few.