No. 1/2 (2016)

The purpose of the analysis is to show that tourism has developed between these two variables with large sociological implications because mobility is an essential part of people’s living style. Italian cities can be managed in a way beneficial to residents if they accept hospimobility as a new form of modern city production system. Tourism is not an independentphenomenon, it is not a sector of the urban economy but a blurred system with undefined borders. It can be analyzed and understood as long as it is.considered as a set of variables, quantitative and qualitative, where no universal laws can be fixed. In short, even though tourism is a fluid concept with constant changes, it is not easy to manage. The paper suggests some keys to the understanding of this constant evolution.

The author offers an analysis of the sharing economy, which is a typical example of the great social changes that have taken place in the past few years: car sharing, Uber pop, Blablacar, airbnb as well as the home restaurant and social eating are some of the new trends dealt with in the section. The sharing economy has had a tremendous impact on the production system; while it is open to dispute how the new forms of sharing have circumvented the rules and obstacles valid for similar activities already in place, like in the field of hospitality, we wonder what impact they could have had in a fully open market . Anyway, it is undeniable that the sharing economy is revolutionizing the tourist industry.

With reference to hospitality, the Italian tourist industry has to face many difficulties. Problems are due to the small size of many hotels as well as to the increasing scattered competition from various forms of private accommodation holiday rentals. In order to enhance their competitiveness, the “standard” hotels must adjust to the times getting refurbished and updating their services so as to stand out for their quality. There seem to be two possible ways to achieve such improvement: either affiliate with one of the many world-famous hotel brands, that are collecting customers even at the cheapest end of the market, or create their own identity and aim straight on the network. The keywords of today’s marketers are; in-room entertainment, self-catering, high-speed wi-fi, web-reputation, social-media, mobile-application, millennial-travellers.

This work proposes an analysis of the spatial distribution of tourist facilities in Tuscany in the years 2000-2013 and the evolution of tourist flows in the same time interval. The purpose of the work is twofold: 1) the evaluation of the progressive development of territorial specialisation in tourism; 2) the identification of common (or contrasting) trends in tourism flows between sub-regional territories. To assess the spatial association, both Moran's index and a special test to identify common patterns between contiguous areas were used. Moran's correlation index is based on the queen pattern. On the other hand, the local Moran correlation index (LISA) was used to identify the presence of possible spatial clusters during the period considered. The geographical unit used is the municipality, which identifies a very specific administrative territory. The results of this study would like to provide insight into the degree of territorial affinity and/or complementarity, which may also be useful for the definition of public and private policies as well as their evaluation.

Tourism is a multidimensional phenomenon as it involves many sectors, people, families and populations. Since the seventies, authors agreed there are many kinds of tourism (ethnical, cultural and historical) linked to motivations, accommodations and the relationships between the tourist and the local community. Tourism also characterized by extreme complexity and it produces, in the long term, a significant impact on the environment, culture and destination. Issues about sustainability of tourism destination are increasing and local authorities have to manage and to coordinate tourism policies by combining stakeholders’ interest. According to these different and divergent interest and to assure a unique tourism policy, Tuscany developed an integrated model aimed to identify shared policies for sustainability tourism, based on Tourist Destination Observers. The research aims to outline – by using the case analysis – a model to identifying shared tourism policies to develop and to promote local destination according to stakeholders’ point of view.

The aim of the work, which focused particularly on the period 2013-2015, was to analyze the arrivals and presences in tourist accommodation establishments in the province of Pistoia, for the purpose of providing prompt, adequate and suitable information for the promotion of tourism in the area. The Tourist Office of the now suppressed Province of Pistoia had, in fact, prepared new indices and classifications for these years, which included the sex and age of guests and their length of stay. In addition to providing more detailed knowledge of the client, the resulting data also enabled the creation of loyalty programmes for the entire hotel and non-hotel accommodation sector. After recalling the origin of tourism statistics in our country and how they have evolved over the years, due also to the advent of information technology, data on the consistency of hotel and non-hotel establishments in Pistoia and variations in the flow of arrivals and presences were taken into consideration. Observation focused not only on the province, but also on broader territorial areas: the Metropolitana, Montana and Valdinievole districts. Arrivals and presences were broken down by month, type of accommodation, and the provenance of tourists (national or international). The traditional approach was followed by an analysis of arrivals classified by sex, age group and length of stay. The latter are “new data” for which coverage is still not entirely complete, but which are, nevertheless, of great interest, in the light of the peculiarities revealed in seasonal trends as regards type of accommodation and nationality. The analysis ended by pointing out how both the old and new data were useful for providing suitable and immediate knowledge of trends in the hospitality industry and, above all, since a complete collection of data is involved, for promoting even very small areas of the country. The Pistoia Provincial Tourist Office also studied the reasons why travellers had chosen to stay at their accommodation establishments; some were on school trips, others were engaged in sports activities and a few were attending health resorts. Many gave culture and cultural tourism as the reason for their stay, an aspect which appears to make the choice of Pistoia as “City of Culture” for 2017 well deserved.

The paper is a short case study on tourism in Bisceglie, a town with a population of about 55,000, in the province of Barletta-Andria-Trani, the smallest province of Apulia, created recently (2004) and which has been operational only since 2009. Besides, provinces in Italy were abolished in 2014! 1.4% of all the inhabitants of Apulia live in Bisceglie, but the town accounts only for 0.5% of the tourist numbers in the region, clearly displaying the existence of a gap. This short study highlights the weak development of the local tourism, with reference both to the offer and to demand , in striking contrast with the regional trend of strong growth and despite the good potentialities of the tourist market.