The Sican Network: partners
Reinventing himself at fifty
A former commercial agent’s adventure
starts from Prizzi
With customized services and itineraries
the target audience of Transfer and Tourism
is mainly international customers
His clientele is mainly international, arriving mostly from the United States, Great Britain, France, Australia and Russia. The headquarters of his company, Transfer and Tourism, is in Prizzi, in the heart of the Sicani Mountains, where preparations are already in full swing for Easter, which in these parts is very special, thanks to the “Dance of the Devils,” an ancient tradition played between the sacred and the profane, which makes Resurrection Sunday unique.
Mario Blanda, as he likes to call himself, is “proudly, a Sican doc from Prizzi.” He opened the company in 2016; before that, he was a sales agent in the footwear business for 30 years, representing some of the industry’s leading brands.
“In the meantime,” he says, “the world has changed: large-scale distribution and online sales have put small merchants in crisis, and when the company, for which I was working, offered me the role of head of a master agency that was to cover all of southern Italy, I decided it was time to change course. I wanted to continue being close to my daughters Martina Andrea and Giulia, and besides, that was no longer the work I liked to do. In short, in my 50s, I decided to reinvent myself and embark on a new adventure, on something that would excite me and help make our wonderful area known. Thus Transfer and Tourism was born.”
The company with its own vehicles and tourist services, thanks in part to its collaboration with other companies in the sector with which it networks, works throughout the island, offering services ranging from shuttles to and from ports, airports and train stations, to customized tourist itineraries that make use of specialized tour guides and escorts; the Prizzi-based company also offers the possibility of renting vacation apartments.
“We range,” says Mario Blanda, “from historical itineraries to artistic ones, from naturalistic ones to food and wine ones. Those who come to Sicily from abroad for the first time mainly ask to see the Valley of the Temples, Segesta, Syracuse, but our goal is to introduce them to our precious Sicilian villages as well, to promote an experiential tourism that enhances human capital, the real wealth of our territory. Among other things, we handle baggage transportation for pilgrims on the Via Francigena.”
Slow rhythms, good food and ancient traditions, such as that of Prizzi’s “Dance of the Devils,” which Mario Blanda is very fond of. “A unique event,” Blanda says, “that on Easter Sunday sees even death in person going around the streets of the ancient village. Death and devils spend the day taking prisoners among the public and do not stop even in front of the Madonna who is about to re-embrace the Risen Christ. The forces of evil will attempt to prevent the meeting between Mary and Jesus twice, but on the third attempt they are struck down and killed by the angels. A beautiful feast, of great fascination, which ends with the bells being tolled in general joy.”
Transfer and Tourism’s clients also include several foreigners of Italian origin, mainly from the United States, who come to Sicily in search of their roots, and more. “The motivation is not only the link with the territory,” says Blanda, “but also the possibility, after starting the bureaucratic process in their own country and after a period of stay in Sicily, to obtain dual citizenship. Thanks to Italian citizenship, in fact, they also become European citizens, which can be very useful to them from the point of view of studies and work.”
Text by Editors
