An Italian village that offered free holidays to 40 vacationing families got more than its money’s worth out of the publicity, as well as generating 8,000 applications for this year’s spots.
The village of San Giovanni in Galdo, a hilltop commune in the Molise region of southern Italy, like many others, has suffered from depopulation and economic reverses, and is struggling to attract new families and new economic opportunities. The forty selected families were assigned a week each in one of three empty homes in the village, transportation not included.
The village’s region, Molise, got a burst of publicity when the New York Times featured it as one of the 52 places to visit in 2020, and it responded with a ‘Give Yourself Molise campaign, and the village added its own offer. The town, which is forty minutes from the sea and two hours from Rome and Naples, said it got applications “from all over the world really” including 70 from Kazakhstan.
Since there are many other villages in the region with no holiday accommodation but plenty of empty houses, other offers may be made for next year.
