People change.
Markets follow.
What's next?

Manuel Gruni's journey started in holiday resorts. Working with major organised-tourism groups, he travelled across destinations and cultures, supervising resort teams, coordinating destination services and supporting new openings.

It was the kind of experience no classroom could replicate. Living inside the tourism industry meant seeing the entire journey from the guest's point of view: arrival, accommodation, entertainment, assistance, expectations, problems and memories.

More importantly, it meant learning something that would shape every business that followed: tourism is not really about places. It is about people and the way they experience them.

Before smartphones made everyone a photographer, holiday photography was already part of the travel experience. Fotomonelle was created around a simple idea: rethink traditional resort photography through an all-female team.

Young photographers, cameras in hand, moved through holiday villages capturing spontaneous moments, emotions and experiences that guests could take home with them.

It was a small revolution in destination services, but also an early lesson in something that would become increasingly important in the years ahead: people do not simply buy a holiday. They buy the memory of it.

Animatour brought together three different areas of experience: tourism products, travel agencies and destination services. The idea was simple: who can sell a destination better than someone who actually lives and works there?

Tourist entertainers and destination staff became travel consultants. Instead of relying exclusively on printed catalogues, customers could speak with people who genuinely knew the resorts, beaches, hotels, restaurants and experiences they were recommending.

Social media completed the circle. Guests met during their holidays remained connected through Facebook and other emerging platforms. The relationship did not end at check-out: it could become the beginning of the next booking.

Animatour was an early attempt to replace impersonal information with first-hand knowledge, human relationships and real experience. Years before social selling became a buzzword, the principle was already there.

In 2013, Manuel joined Eden Viaggi, one of the leading names in Italian tour operating. For three years he worked closely with management on marketing, special events and projects involving tourism boards, airlines and the Italian travel-agency distribution network.

It was an opportunity to understand the industry at scale: product creation, tour operating, distribution, destinations and trade relationships all working as parts of the same machine.

Projects such as the Eden World Cafés experimented with new ways of connecting travel agents directly with the people who actually built the tourism product. The lesson was clear: the closer you bring the product to the person selling it, the better that product can be understood, communicated and sold.

Then Instagram changed the way people looked at the world. And, inevitably, the way they chose where to travel. Travelgram was born from the convergence of the Animatour experience, social media and the rapidly growing creator economy.

Instead of describing a destination through pages of a catalogue, Travelgram sent creators there. They travelled, experienced the product and told the story in real time through images, posts, videos and stories. Hotels, airlines, tour operators and tourism boards could suddenly show a destination while it was being experienced.

We called them living catalogues. The traveller no longer had to imagine what was behind the brochure. They could follow someone behind the curtain.

The medium had changed. The principle had not: real people are often the most powerful way to tell a real experience.

Boat holidays had traditionally been perceived as complicated, expensive and reserved for experienced sailors. Be2Sea was created to change that. It built a B2B environment where travel agencies could access, compare and sell boat holidays — including skipper options — through a straightforward booking system.

In collaboration with Gian Paolo Vairo's TrustForce, the project brought the product directly to the Italian travel trade. The platform rapidly reached a network of more than 1,000 travel agencies and offered access to thousands of boats across hundreds of destinations.

The real innovation was not the boat. It was making a niche product understandable and sellable to a much wider market.

Flights stopped. Hotels closed. Borders changed almost overnight. Tourism faced one of the greatest disruptions in its history. But people did not stop wanting to travel. They changed how they wanted to travel.

Privacy, independence, open spaces and smaller groups suddenly became more valuable than crowded environments and shared facilities. Be2Sea unexpectedly found itself perfectly positioned for this new demand.

A private boat, once considered a niche holiday for sailing enthusiasts, became something else: an independent space, outdoors, away from crowds, with the possibility of adding a skipper and turning complexity into service.

The crisis reinforced an idea that would influence everything that came afterwards: when behaviour changes, the product has to change with it.

If travellers wanted private spaces, independence and control over their environment, why should the alternative to a hotel stop at a boat? Villas Planner was created with a portfolio of more than 2,000 private villas, initially across Italy and later expanding towards destinations including Spain and Greece.

But the idea was never simply to rent houses. A private villa could be personalised with services and transformed into a complete hospitality experience. Privacy without giving up service. Independence without giving up assistance. A home with some of the best characteristics of a hotel.

The traditional idea of luxury was changing. Luxury was becoming space, privacy, freedom and personalisation. In 2023, Manuel exited the company and moved on to the next evolution of that idea.

Covid did not only change travellers. It exposed the fragility of traditional hospitality models. Hotel properties that had historically relied on guaranteed leases from large tourism operators suddenly found themselves facing cancelled programmes, falling demand and unpaid commitments.

Cala Domingos was a 120-unit hospitality complex in Mallorca traditionally operated according to the classic resort and all-inclusive model. The question was simple: what if the hotel itself changed before the traveller changed again?

Drawing on the experience developed with private villas, the property began evolving towards a hybrid model based on independent apartments, greater privacy and flexible hospitality services. Not quite a traditional hotel. Not simply a holiday rental. Something in between.

Cala Domingos became a real-world laboratory for a concept that would later become central to Welldone's hospitality strategy.

Tour operators had spent decades buying hotel rooms through guaranteed allotments and securing airline seats through charter agreements. They committed capacity in advance, took the commercial risk and then distributed that inventory through B2B and B2C channels.

RevenHome applied the same logic to private properties. Instead of simply managing a villa on behalf of its owner, RevenHome commits to selected properties through guaranteed commercial agreements. The owner receives predictable income. RevenHome takes the commercial risk.

It is not traditional property management. It is tour operating applied to private homes. A model learned from hotels, redesigned for the rapidly growing extra-hospitality accommodation market.

RevenHome solved the acquisition side. RentHome was created to develop the distribution side. The idea goes one step further than selling accommodation.

Take an independent property and add selected hotel-style services: guest assistance, housekeeping, transfers, experiences, food, concierge services and everything that can improve the stay. What emerges is what we call the Unbundled Hotel.

The services of a hotel, without necessarily having the hotel. Home like Hotel.

This is where private accommodation stops being the alternative to hospitality and starts becoming a hospitality category of its own. And that creates a powerful new competitor to traditional hotels: the professional extra-hospitality market.

After more than two decades focused primarily on travel and hospitality, Welldone began diversifying. The first move was wellness. Welldone acquired a majority stake in Fabbrica Benessere, entering a group of specialised brands including Store for Wellness, For My Well, For My Therapy, Wellissimi and Presso Store.

The products changed. The customer did not. Wellness technology, body-care equipment and products designed around personal wellbeing brought Welldone into a market increasingly driven by the same forces already transforming tourism: people are investing more in themselves, their time, their health, their comfort and the quality of their everyday lives.

For Welldone, diversification does not mean abandoning what we know. It means applying what we have learned to new industries.