A story of music, travel and family

Our story

It all began with a microphone

Before it was a travel agency, Orava Travel existed in the mind of a man who had already toured the world with a microphone in his hand. Mirko Mazza was the voice of the Scooters, the beat band from Ovada that rose to national fame in 1966 with “La Motoretta”: the group that made a whole generation of local youngsters dream and inspired dozens of bands in the town.

It was during a tour of Northern Europe that travel changed his life: there he met Marianne Björksten, a Finnish girl who would become his wife. From that encounter between a beat singer from Piedmont and a young woman from the North, something was born that was destined to last far longer than a song.

1978: Orava is born

Years of concerts, stages and roads travelled from one country to another had taught Mirko and Marianne that travel brings people together and can change a destiny. In 1978 they decided to make it their profession and founded the first travel agency in the Ovada area. The name also comes from Marianne: “orava” means squirrel in Finnish. A curious, agile and tireless animal, just like the agency they were building. A few years later their friends Gianluigi Ponzano and Livia Mazzera joined as partners.

Mirko brought the charisma and the way with people he had learned on stage; Marianne an international outlook and Nordic rigour. Together they made Orava Travel the benchmark in the province of Alessandria, both for those setting off to see the world and for those arriving to discover Monferrato. In the mid-1980s the agency was licensed for IATA air, rail and ferry ticketing, a rare achievement for a small-town agency.

The turning point of the 1980s

In those same years came another insight: companies, too, needed someone to organise reward trips, conventions and meetings for them. Thus the incentive business was born, growing over the years until Orava Travel was delivering congresses and events in Italy and abroad, as well as assisting local and international companies with their employees' travel logistics.

A legacy that lives on

Mirko left us in 1999, Marianne in 2014. But their way of working is still here, at Via Torino 30: knowing customers by name, listening before proposing, treating every trip as if it were our own.

Today the agency is led by Kenneth, Mirko's son, a licensed aircraft pilot and qualified drone pilot, who has taken up the baton and carried it into the future, from MICE events to professional drone flight. The tools change, but not the spirit of that young man who sang on stage: sending people off, and bringing them home with something more.