Buy a dress, choose a perfume and plan your next trip to the same place. Rinascente brings a travel agency into a department store in Italy for the first time, including tourism among the services with which it aims to broaden the customer experience beyond shopping. The Rinascente Travel Concierge by Bluvacanze opens on the sixth floor of the Milan Piazza Duomo store, within the normal purchasing path. Not a separate space, therefore, but a new point of sale in the Bluvacanze network integrated into the department store and open seven days a week.
The Italian operation is part of a movement that is affecting some of the main international department stores: travel enters the retail offer as a service with a high consultancy content, together with personal shopping, catering, wellness and other experiences that are difficult to replicate with online sales alone. A strategy which in Spain has a consolidated precedent in El Corte Inglés and which is also taking new forms in the United Kingdom.
Personal shopping applied to tourism
Behind the Italian project there are two operators of very different sizes but with common ground in the high end of the market. Bluvacanze, controlled by MSC Cruises, has around 300 of its own points of sale, as well as 600 independent agencies affiliated to the Blunet network. Rinascente instead inserts the new service in the process of transforming the department store from a predominantly commercial place to a space that brings together products, catering, events and services.
“With Rinascente Travel Concierge we bring travel to a place that makes selection and consultancy an essential part of its identity,” explains Domenico Pellegrino, CEO of the Bluvacanze Group. The goal, he adds, is to transform consultancy into a "personal, curated and built around the client's needs" experience.
The logic is that of personal shopping applied to tourism. The consultant starts from the traveler's interests and needs to build personalized itineraries, with particular attention to experiences in Italy and "shop and go" proposals, such as the gift boxes designed with Terme De Montel. In addition to the physical presence of Bluvacanze specialists, there is a dedicated digital platform, where the customer can describe the desired trip and, through artificial intelligence, obtain a first personalized proposal. Digital and personal relationships thus become two gateways to the same service, with the aim of using technology to simplify planning without giving up the personal relationship.
“We have around 20 million customers throughout Italy and four million in our community,” underlines Mariella Elia, CEO of Rinascente. “The goal is to expand our services tailored to them, offering a concierge who can plan a trip to Italy or even just book a train or a day in Milan, all while keeping the human relationship central.” If the pilot project that has just started in the Milanese store gives the expected results, "the next stop could be Rome".
The Spanish model is worth over two billion
The most structured European precedent is that of El Corte Inglés, even if the corporate model is different. In fact, the Spanish group does not host an external operator: Viajes El Corte Inglés is part of the same group and tourism represents a real business line alongside retail.
The numbers published by the Spanish group give the measure of the phenomenon. In the 2025-2026 financial year, closed on February 28, Viajes El Corte Inglés recorded a turnover of 2.117 billion euros, up 3.1%, and an Ebitda of 107 million, increased by 6.3%. The group also indicates total revenues of 3.489 billion euros for the division. Overall, El Corte Inglés closed the year with a turnover of 14.988 billion.
The numbers show how travel can become something more than a complementary service to shopping: in the Spanish model it constitutes an autonomous and relevant business, built around the same relationship with the customer developed by the retailer.
John Lewis focuses on travel
Closer to the formula chosen by Rinascente is what is happening in the United Kingdom. John Lewis has just announced a partnership with bespoke travel specialist Audley Travel, which will open dedicated spaces in 12 department stores from November, including Oxford Street in London, Edinburgh, Cambridge and Cardiff.
