Digital Detox Tourism as a Resource for the Enhancement of Cultural Heritage. A Development Study for Certosa di Pisa in Calci (Tuscany).

Public cultural heritage demands innovative solutions to raise the required funds for maintenance and management in a context of reduction in public financial resources. This issue especially affects museum centres located in buildings of artistic and historic value requiring huge investments for restoration and maintenance. A proper mix of public and private activities is necessary to guarantee economic sustainability when public funds are scarce. The paper proposes the case of Certosa di Pisa in Calci (PI), a publicly owned museum centre located in a former monastery. A study by the University of Pisa proposes to create a foundation for managing it, with the aim both to have access to private funds and to include new activities in currently unused areas of the building. In particular, the study proposes the creation of an accommodation structure for a specific tourist niche market, i.e. digital detox. Digital detox tourism is born to deal with the increasing number of people dependent on technology. Digital detox accommodations are usually set in isolated buildings surrounded by nature, to help people unplugging from digital devices. Since old monasteries usually recall old spiritual life experiences, using them as locations where provide services of digital detox would be a modern reinterpretation of the original function of these buildings and might well help to rise resources for their maintenance. The paper is organized in three parts: a) state of the art about digital detox and tourism trends; b) benchmarking analysis of six Italian digital detox accommodations; c) project proposal and cost benefit analysis.