Branding, Culture, Politics, and Everything in Between

As I already stated in a previous post, I was in Rome for short vacation. Great weather, good food and most of the time I enjoyed the attractions. St. Peter’s church was awesome and uncrowded, the Sistine Chapel and the Colosseum on the other hand were way too crowded for me to enjoy. But the more time I spent in Rome the more it started to feel like exactly the same.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in the restaurants. Whenever we stopped in front of a restaurant to check out the menu, it was nearly identical to the one next to it. Practically all restaurants in Rome had the same pastas (arrabiata, pomodoro etc.) and pizzas (margherita, quattro formaggi etc.) on their menus. After three nights of dining out, I was more than ready to try something different – anything but Italian.

The reason for this phenomenon is obvious: Rome attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year (especially American, as I observed), and they expect a certain “authentic Italian experience”. The trouble is, what tourists perceive as authentic or Italian is often quite clichéd and limited, because they know so little of Italy beforehand. That’s why restaurants trim their menus to match the tourists’ expectations.

This leads to a very interesting phenomenon: as all the restaurants race to meet the tourists’ expectations, they become basically identical, cannibalizing each others’ market share and of course, their collective authenticity. I even thought of a name for this phenomenon: involuntary franchising. After just a few meals eating out in Rome became as special as eating at a McDonald’s.

There were more examples, of course. Touring the Colosseum with hundreds of other tourists listening to a dry and unenthusiastic presentation through hand-held speakers felt about as remarkable as a sitcom re-run. The lack of exclusiveness often killed the authentic experience (like I said, I loved St. Peter’s because for some reason it wasn’t very crowded that day).

I wonder if it were be able to tour the Sistine Chapel at night in a group of, say, 10 people at 1000$ per head? THAT would be something to tell home about.