Tourist Postcard Surge in Alto Garda Highlights Postal and Promotional Role

During the two middle months of the tourist season from Riva and Arco, nearly a thousand postcards are sent out daily: specifically, 29,000 in July and 30,000 in August. This was reported in a note by Poste Italiane which monitored some of the most significant tourist centers on the peninsula.

There are no data available from previous years: marketing efforts have developed alongside privatization. However, there is a 5% overall increase in postal volume in the Trento area and a 15% rise during the fifteen days of the Christmas holidays.

Promotional value and rapid deliveries

From the perspective of Poste, the nearly sixty thousand postcards dispatched from Alto Garda worldwide represent a source of satisfaction: the introduction of priority mail, with the subsequent commitment to deliver greetings in reasonably short times, is rewarding for the company.

According to the agency’s officials, the certainty that greetings arrive before the sender provides an incentive for holidaymakers who, nearing the end of their stay, carve out half an hour to review the list of those remaining at home.

For locals, the promotional function of the “old” postcard is reaffirmed. According to reports, it was precisely in Riva del Garda at the end of the 1800s that Cesare Bertanza, a stationer with a shop in Piazza Tre Novembre beneath the Town Hall, decided to embellish the plain and severe postal card with an illustration.

Over time, views expanded to fill an entire face of the card, then were naively painted with few basic colors—blue, green, brown—until photography, first in black and white and eventually in color, triumphed.

Despite email and SMS, the postcard persists. Who would have thought?