The shared experience of walking can turn into a way of meeting your soulmate—here's a new tourism operator with an innovative idea that makes experiences pay off through new romantic connections.
To meet someone, find your soulmate, or flirt with a person who might help you rediscover the urge to be part of a couple rather than on your own—from now on there’s also Slow Date, a service that promises to make encounters with your other half easier by weaving them into a trail of trekking and adventure in the Biella area. Behind the project is Sara Massarotto, whose idea it was to create “matches” through a site that’s part dating, part tourism, where adults of every age group and sexual orientation can sign up to take part in the walks. The point is to step out of the virtual world of little hearts and likes and into nature instead, where you choose a partner by seeing them in the flesh and breathing clean air in the shade of the woods.
The process for taking part is simple: users register on the platform, where, by filling in a questionnaire, they share some information about themselves in accordance with the privacy policy set out on the site. Those who sign up must indicate a period of availability and, above all, what kind of experience and partner they’re looking for—that is: someone to get to know who shares a passion for the mountains and their own values, a trekking companion, or both.
In short, first there were the dating apps—now less effective, with Tinder shedding a full 600,000 users in 2025 alone. Then came LinkedIn, which by all accounts works just as well for finding a romantic partner as for landing a job. Now, with Slow Date, another piece is added to those entrepreneurial ventures that ought to help lift a European birth rate whose bar keeps sinking ever lower.
The slow-tourism idea of Sara Massarotto—who describes herself (on LinkedIn) as a Digital Marketing Strategist and Content Creator for the outdoor sector and for slow travel on foot and by bike—has also caught the attention of the national media, which recently devoted an article to her, here, written by Chiara Berette for lastampa.it. Speaking to the well-known Turin newspaper, Massarotto (31) explained that, once the walk is over, she wants to act as a “filter,” sparing participants from having to exchange personal details if they aren’t interested in the match. She will pass on the details only where both people involved share a mutual wish to meet again.
The owner of Slow Date has noticed that it’s more often “men” than women who sign up for the initiative. What’s more, from what she has observed so far, women tend to prefer coming to the matchmaking walks in the company of a female friend. The format was designed by its founder with a few tools to break the ice in the early stages of the trek—such as a deck of cards with more or less pointed questions to put to one another.
The territory where these first steps toward finding a soulmate take place—on foot, of course—is the Biella area. It was during the kind of introspection that trekking naturally invites that Massarotto had the flash of inspiration that gave rise to the idea. In essence, it’s about how much—and in what way—walking eases interactions, even between people who have never met before. The shared experience of trekking, then, put to the service of new romantic relationships. But forget sneakers and stilettos, because you only take part in slow dating with hiking boots on your feet.
Andrea G. Cammarata