What happens when the Digital Nomads in Italy stop being tourists and start becoming temporary residents of small towns?
While many remote workers initially choose the best cities in Italy for digital nomads, smaller towns are becoming an increasingly interesting alternative.
Over the last few years, we have been trying to answer this question in Tursi, a small town in Basilicata, Southern Italy.
What started as an experiment has gradually evolved into Tursi Digital Nomads: a project that brings international remote workers to Italian villages for several weeks, combining accommodation, coworking in Italy, community activities and direct interaction with local residents.
Since 2021, more than 500 people from over 50 countries have participated in our communities and experiences. Along the way, we have learned that attracting remote workers to rural areas can generate much more than tourism.
It can create economic activity, new relationships, international visibility and even new demand for properties that had been empty for years.
But there are challenges too.
Here is what we have learned from trying to build a digital nomad village in Southern Italy and why we believe the next step is taking this model beyond one town.
What Is Tursi Digital Nomads?
Tursi Digital Nomads started in 2021 with a relatively simple idea: remote work forced by the Covid situation started to allow thousands of professionals to decide where they wanted to live. At the same time, towns such as Tursi were facing the opposite problem: depopulation, empty properties, declining economic activity and younger generations moving towards larger cities.
Could these two trends somehow meet?
This was the question that Salvatore, founder of Tursi Digital Nomads was asking himself, and what he did in Tursi was the answer: giving to the Digital Nomads in Italy the opportunity not only to simply visit a rural destination, but to temporarily become part of it.
Our communities generally bring remote workers together for several weeks. Participants have accommodation, access to a shared workspace and a programme of social and local activities, while continuing to work normally during the week.
The coworking space itself is located in a former monastery in the historic centre of Tursi. For us, this is also an example of how coworking in Italy can go beyond conventional offices in Milan or Rome and become a tool for reactivating underused spaces in smaller communities.
From a Small Experiment to 500+ International Participants
Since we started, more than 500 people from 50+ countries have participated in Tursi Digital Nomads communities and related experiences.
They are developers, marketers, designers, entrepreneurs, consultants, freelancers and remote employees who can work from almost anywhere.
Over the years, we have organized more than 100 activities, workshops and community experiences, many of them together with local residents and businesses.
These have included local dinners, wine experiences, cooking activities, outdoor excursions, cultural visits, workshops, professional skill-sharing sessions and initiatives connecting international professionals with younger local residents.
The idea is simple: the more points of contact we create between temporary residents and permanent residents, the more value the community can generate.
That is one of the fundamental principles behind our interpretation of a digital nomad village.
How We Scaled Beyond Tursi
Tursi became our laboratory, but we never believed the model should remain limited to one town.
Over time, we started testing communities and partnerships in other destinations, including Matera, Rotondella and other locations in Italy and Greece.
Across our activities, we have now worked with multiple municipalities and experimented with different types of destinations: historic villages, internationally recognized cities, coastal towns and seasonal tourism destinations.
The format changes depending on the territory, but the underlying model remains similar.
Find accommodation that can host remote workers for medium-term stays. Create reliable coworking in Italy or shared working infrastructure. Build a temporary community rather than simply selling rooms. Involve local businesses and residents. Then design experiences that encourage participants to spend time and money within the territory.
This is what makes the model potentially replicable.
Economic Impact: When Digital Nomads Become Temporary Residents
The first impact is the easiest to understand: money stays in the local economy.
A tourist might spend one or two nights in a village. A remote worker can stay for three weeks or a month.
During that period, they need accommodation, groceries, restaurants, cafés, transportation, activities and everyday services.
Across our activities, we estimate that Tursi Digital Nomads has generated hundreds of thousands of euros in direct and indirect economic activity, including more than €300,000 connected to accommodation and over €600,000 in activity involving local businesses across the wider project ecosystem.
This difference matters.
The objective of attracting Digital Nomads in Italy to smaller destinations should not simply be increasing visitor numbers. It should be increasing the amount of time people spend in the territory and the number of local economic relationships generated during that stay.
A digital nomad village can therefore complement traditional tourism with a different type of visitor: someone who stays longer and needs to live rather than simply consume a destination.
Social Impact: Bringing New People Into Everyday Village Life
The economic numbers are important, but some of the most interesting effects are social.
Imagine living in a small town where the population has been declining for decades and suddenly hearing English, Spanish, German or Portuguese around the main square.
That changes perceptions.
For older residents, international remote workers can bring curiosity and new interactions into everyday life. For younger people, they can provide exposure to professions, career paths and lifestyles that may otherwise feel very distant.
We have organized initiatives where local young people meet remote professionals informally to discuss university choices, careers and opportunities.
At the same time, the learning goes both ways.
Digital Nomads in Italy are not arriving only to teach or “help” local communities. They are learning about local culture, food, traditions and ways of living that are very different from those of major international cities.
When it works, the relationship is based on exchange rather than intervention.
Visibility: Putting Small Villages on an International Map
Before discovering our project, many participants had never heard of Tursi. Some had never heard of Basilicata.
This is another potentially significant impact of the digital nomad village model, every participant becomes a potential storyteller. They publish Instagram stories, write LinkedIn posts, create videos, tell friends about their experience and sometimes return with other people.
A small destination that could never compete with Rome, Florence or Venice for conventional international tourism does not necessarily need to compete with them.
It can position itself around something different.
For Digital Nomads in Italy, being unknown can actually become part of the attraction: a place that still feels undiscovered, authentic and connected to everyday local life.
Remote work creates an opportunity for these destinations to reach international audiences through an entirely new narrative.
Real Estate Impact: Giving Empty Properties a New Purpose
Empty houses are one of the most visible consequences of the depopulation, the worst problem rural areas are facing nowadays.
In Tursi, the growth of the community has allowed us to involve dozens of property owners and reactivate accommodation that can be used by remote workers during our programmes.
Across the project, eight previously underused properties have been brought back into active use, while more than 50 property owners have been involved in different ways.
This is particularly interesting because a digital nomad village does not necessarily require building a new resort or a large centralized coliving facility.
The village can become the coliving. This distributed model is one interpretation of what coliving means for Digital Nomads, particularly in rural destinations where the community can extend beyond a single building.
Remote workers can stay in existing apartments and houses, work from a shared coworking in Italy hub and meet in restaurants, squares and local businesses.
Instead of separating the community from the town, the accommodation model can distribute its economic impact throughout it.
Why Coworking in Italy Can Become a Tool for Rural Regeneration
When people think about coworking in Italy, they usually imagine modern offices in Milan, Rome or another major city.
In rural areas, coworking can serve a different purpose.
It provides the technical infrastructure that makes living in a small town realistic for remote professionals.
Reliable internet, comfortable desks, meeting spaces and places for video calls may sound basic, but without them a rural remote-work strategy cannot work.
At the same time, coworking creates a physical meeting point.
In Tursi, our workspace in a former monastery is not only somewhere to open a laptop. It is where people meet in the morning, exchange ideas, organize activities and sometimes interact with the local community.
This is why we see coworking in Italy as infrastructure for people rather than simply infrastructure for work.
For remote workers considering the country as a base, we have also created an honest guide to living as a Digital Nomad in Italy, covering transport, costs, social life, internet and everyday challenges.
The Strengths of the Digital Nomad Village Model
The first strength is relatively obvious: remote workers already exist.
A territory does not need to create a new category of traveler. Millions of professionals can already work independently of their employer’s physical location.
The second strength is flexibility.
A digital nomad village can begin experimentally. A municipality does not necessarily need to invest millions in infrastructure before understanding whether demand exists.
A temporary community of 20 or 30 people can already test accommodation, internet connectivity, local partnerships and resident reactions. This is also why we have chosen a Pop Up Coliving model for many of our communities: it allows us to test a destination for three weeks before thinking about permanent infrastructure.
The third strength is the combination of different impacts.
The same person can generate accommodation revenue, spend in local businesses, participate in community initiatives, give visibility to the destination and potentially return in the future.
Few territorial development strategies connect these elements so directly.
The Weaknesses and What We Have Learned
The model also has limitations.
The first is seasonality. A few successful communities each year do not automatically reverse decades of depopulation.
The second is infrastructure. Without reliable internet, appropriate accommodation and transportation, attracting Digital Nomads in Italy to rural destinations becomes considerably more difficult.
The third is community management.
Putting 30 remote workers in a village does not automatically create positive impact. Someone needs to connect participants with local businesses, associations and residents. Otherwise, the international community risks becoming an isolated bubble.
There is also a question of scale.
What works with 20 people can become much more complicated with 200. Growth has to be managed without destroying the authenticity that made the destination attractive in the first place.
This is perhaps our biggest lesson: the goal should not be maximum numbers. It should be maximum value per person for the territory.
From Tursi to a Regional Network of Digital Nomad Villages
Our next step is to take what we have learned in Tursi and think at a regional level.
Basilicata has dozens of towns facing similar challenges: depopulation, underused housing, limited international visibility and an economy that often struggles to capture longer-term visitors.
At the same time, these places offer exactly what many experienced remote workers increasingly search for: nature, authenticity, slower lifestyles and meaningful communities. This shift is already happening across several rural hubs for Digital Nomads in Europe, where remote work is being used to create new opportunities beyond traditional urban destinations.
Our vision is therefore not to create another single digital nomad village.
It is to develop a network of destinations across Basilicata, each with its own identity but connected through shared standards, community management, accommodation, coworking in Italy, international promotion and impact measurement.
One village could specialize in nature and outdoor experiences. Another could build a community around entrepreneurship or technology. Others could focus on culture, food, art or craftsmanship.
Tursi would become not the final destination of the project, but the proof of concept.
Can Digital Nomads in Italy Really Help Revitalize Rural Areas?
Remote workers will not solve depopulation alone.
And presenting Digital Nomads in Italy as the solution to every challenge facing rural communities would be unrealistic.
But they can become one piece of a much larger strategy.
They can create demand for empty properties. They can support restaurants and small businesses. They can make coworking in Italy viable outside major cities. They can create relationships with residents, expose younger generations to international professional networks and give unknown destinations new visibility.
Most importantly, they can bring people back into places that have spent decades watching people leave.
After several years of Tursi Digital Nomads, this is perhaps the biggest thing we have learned.
The real value of a digital nomad village is not how many nomads arrive.
It is what remains in the territory after they leave.
