For those returning from vacation, the ItalyComunica company offered an unusual souvenir: it began selling Lake Como air in cans for 9.90 euros (about 11 US dollars or about 40 shekels) a package.
CNN reports this.
According to the author of the article, each can contains 400 ml of “100% natural air” extracted from the picturesque Lake Como, which has attracted more and more tourists in recent years thanks to its natural beauty and famous residents such as George and Amal Clooney. . Cult films such as Casino Royale and House of Gucci were also filmed there.
According to the Lombardy tourist office, Lake Como was visited by more than 5.6 million people in 2023, and this number is only increasing. To take advantage of the growing tourist interest, marketer Davide Abagnale began selling posters of Lake Como. His project became popular after he noticed a large number of posters of San Francisco and Los Angeles during his honeymoon in 2022.
But his latest idea, selling air cans, aims to create a unique and original souvenir that tourists can easily transport in a suitcase. A representative for ItalyComunica told CNN that the product is intended to be “something fun, unusual and even provocative.”
“This is not just a product, but a memory that you can carry in your heart,” Abagnale added.
Cans of ‘fresh air’ from Lake Como for sale to tourists in Italy
– CTV News (@CTVNews) November 4, 2024
He assures that after tourists open the jar, it can serve as a pencil holder.
Not everyone shares the enthusiasm for the idea. For example, Como Mayor Alessandro Rapinese said that although it was new, he would like tourists to take home more traditional souvenirs, such as the silk scarves famous in the region.
“If someone wants to get some fresh air home, that’s fine, but I hope they also take away fond memories of our region,” he said.
Chiara Piscitelli, who sells the bottles in her bookstore in Como, called the product a real “gadget.” Despite the apparent novelty, the idea is not exclusive to Italy. In other places, for example in Naples, they have been selling air in cans for several years. And in 2020, the company offered bottles of “real” British air, becoming a popular souvenir for Britons living abroad. Iceland also sells air to tourists, and one Canadian company saw its sales increase in 2015 when Chinese tourists began purchasing cans of air on a large scale.
Let us remember that “Cursor” wrote that in Germany they are looking for a person who was lucky, but does not know it yet. An anonymous resident of Saxony-Anhalt won the lottery by matching six numbers out of 49 in the final drawing on Saturday, but got the super number wrong. Such a successful outcome was extremely unlikely: the chances of this happening were only 1 in 15.5 million. However, the owner of the lottery ticket, purchased for 15.75 euros at a point of sale in the Zale area, has not yet declared his prize.
