Context Travel has just announced a useful product: a greeting service, orientation walk, and informational handbook for a safe and seamless visit to Italy’s most misunderstood city: Naples. If you’ve ever considered going to Naples but been put off by its gritty reputation for garbage and mafia (neither of which are liable to attack you during your visit, anyway), this is the service for you. It’s a way to get comfortable with the city, and I think it’s a great idea.
My own appreciation for Naples has grown over the years after a bad first impression; the last decade has seen a lot of improvements. It’s a whole different Italy, and it’s certainly big enough to take on lots of tourists without overload. The result? finally somewhere in Italy that doesn’t seem overrun by tourists!
Press Release
The “Naples Welcome Kit” is the first Context offering of its kind. The “Welcome Kit” is a selection of services aimed at supplying visitors with everything they need in order to have a spectacular stay in the city and to get the most out of its excellent cultural institutions, its delectable food scene and its gregarious hospitality.
“We saw a demand for a more hands-on approach to Naples, a city that unfortunately has a reputation for being unsafe and inaccessible to outsiders,” says Megan McDonnell, who manages Context’s programs in Naples. “Our team of docents in the city are masters at turning visitors on to the true soul of Naples, by offering them their unparalleled insider’s knowledge.”
The Welcome Kit includes a customized printed guide to the city filled with lodging, dining, and cultural recommendations, in addition to some notes regarding safety and suggested walking itineraries. Clients can receive the guide before their trip electronically or in printed version.
As part of the package, clients will be met by a Context docent (one of the scholars who leads Context walks in Naples) upon their arrival. The docent will help them with their hotel transfer and assist them with the check-in process. Following, the docent will lead the clients on a 2-hour orientation walk in the vicinity of their hotel. This orientation walk highlights local points of interest and provides a historical context for further explorations of the city.
Also included in the package are two restaurant reservations and a 15% discount on any bookings of private walking seminars with Context.
“The welcome kit was actually our docents’ idea,” says McDonnell. ‘They asked, “How can we get more people to stay in the city itself and not just use it as a launch point for visiting the Amalfi Coast? How do we get people to stay and, inevitably, fall in love with the city?’ This Welcome Kit provides visitors the tools to do just that.”
The Welcome Kit, available on the Context Naples website, costs 270 euro.
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