negative impacts of tourism in italy

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How does tourism impact Italy positively and negatively?

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June 24, 2023

By Laurie Baratti

the impact of tourism in Italy

Italy is one of the most visited countries in the world, attracting millions of visitors every year. Tourism has a significant impact on Italy’s economy, culture, and society. While it brings many benefits, it also presents challenges and negative consequences. This article explores both the positive and negative effects of tourism in Italy.

Positive effects of tourism in Italy

Boosting the economy: how tourism helps italy.

Tourism is one of the main drivers of Italy’s economy, contributing approximately 13% of the country’s GDP. The revenue generated by tourism supports many other industries such as hospitality, transportation, and retail. The money spent by tourists also generates tax revenue for the government, which can be used to improve infrastructure and public services. Additionally, tourism helps to reduce the trade deficit by bringing in foreign currency.

Job creation and employment opportunities

Tourism also creates job opportunities for many people in Italy. About 4.2 million people are employed in the tourism sector, which accounts for about 14% of the country’s workforce. This includes jobs in hotels, restaurants, tour operators, and transportation services. The industry also provides employment for people in rural areas, where other job opportunities may be scarce.

Supporting local businesses and regional development

Tourism can also benefit local businesses and regional development. Visitors often purchase local products and services, such as food, wine, handicrafts, and souvenirs. This can support small businesses and help to preserve local traditions and culture. Tourism can also stimulate regional development by promoting lesser-known areas and attractions, which can lead to increased investment in infrastructure and services.

Preserving and promoting cultural heritage

Italy has a rich cultural heritage that attracts tourists from around the world. Tourism can help to preserve and promote this heritage by supporting conservation efforts, cultural events, and museums. The revenue generated by tourism can also be used to restore historic buildings and landmarks, which can benefit both locals and visitors.

Enhancing Italy’s international image

Tourism can also enhance Italy’s international image and reputation. The country is known for its art, history, food, and fashion, which are promoted through tourism. Visitors who have a positive experience in Italy can become ambassadors for the country, promoting it to others and encouraging them to visit.

Negative effects of tourism in Italy

Overtourism: a growing concern.

Overtourism is becoming a significant issue in some parts of Italy, particularly in cities such as Venice, Rome, and Florence. The large number of visitors can lead to overcrowding, congestion, and strain on local resources. This can cause inconvenience for locals and impact their quality of life. Overtourism can also damage the environment and cultural heritage sites.

Environmental impact of tourism

Tourism can have a negative impact on the environment, especially in popular tourist destinations. The increased traffic can lead to air and noise pollution, as well as damage to natural habitats. Overdevelopment can also harm the environment, as buildings and infrastructure are constructed in sensitive areas such as coastal zones.

Social and cultural impacts of tourism

Tourism can also have social and cultural impacts on local communities. Visitors may disrupt local customs and traditions, which can lead to tension between locals and tourists. The influx of visitors can also cause housing shortages for locals, as properties are converted into vacation rentals. Additionally, the rise of mass tourism can lead to a loss of authenticity and identity in local communities.

Conclusion: finding a balance between tourism and sustainability

Tourism is an essential part of Italy’s economy and culture, bringing many benefits to the country. However, it is crucial to manage tourism in a sustainable way, to ensure that it does not harm the environment or local communities. This requires a balance between promoting tourism and protecting the cultural and natural resources that make Italy unique. Through careful planning and management, Italy can continue to benefit from tourism while preserving its heritage and sustaining its communities.

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Impact of Tourism in the Italian Art Cities: Venice, Florence, and Rome

Il Bel Paese, the Beautiful Country , is distinctly used to describe Italy. It is indeed a gifted country, with a notable natural environment, a mild climate and a prominent cultural heritage. Therefore, its status among the most visited countries not only in Europe, but worldwide, is not a surprise. Tourists arrive to admire the artwork of Michelangelo and Da Vinci, to swim in the beaches of Sardine and Sicily, and to be part of the unique atmosphere of its " art cities ." However, in regards to the everyday life of the residents, are there negative impacts of massive urban tourism?

Among the Italian cities, Venice is probably the most suitable to serve as an example and response to this question. In the historic center, the absurd proportion of 353 tourists per resident gives the impression of a city that serves more as a monument-attraction, and less as a real living space. Among the visitors, a significant number are single day excursionists, or participants of cruises who only take a quick look at the canals and narrow roads, and return to their ship without contributing to the city's economy . The touristic invasion, in combination with the flooding problem that continues to worsen, has led to an abandonment of the city center by the residents moving to other regions around the island.

In comparison to the specific situation of Venice, similar issues are presented for historic centers of other "art cities." Rome, which is naturally the most visited city in Italy, welcomes approximately  twelve million tourists every year. A 2010 study by Sapienza University of Rome showed that the authentic character of the city is in danger of alteration, due to low quality facilities that represent a "fast" tourism. The overcrowding of the city center of Florence by tourists also seems to be a constant cause of stress for its inhabitants, as indicated by a 2012 study published in the journal Tourism Geographies .

Alteration of the historic urban grid  and movement of residents are new threats to the cities' susta inability . Recently the problem of massive tourism has become object of studies and proposals, towards both an  environmental and social solution. One among them points out the need to support local brands and small businesses, in order to maintain the cities' traditional qualities, and another the imposition of new eco-taxes relevant to the touristic facilities.

What should be our attitude as architects and urban designers towards the negative impacts of urban tourism, and what other proposals-initiatives could be introduced to both protect and highlight historic cities?

 Credits: Images by Marilena Mela. Data linked to sources.

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Venice and Cruise Ships: A Delicate Balance

Last month, a 2,500-passenger ship entered the Venetian Lagoon — the first since the pandemic began — reanimating the debate on the negative effects of mass tourism.

By Anna Momigliano

In early June, the MSC Orchestra, a 2,500-passenger cruise ship, entered the Venetian Lagoon at dawn, sailing through St. Mark’s Basin, past the Doge’s Palace and the still-quiet St. Mark’s Square. It continued its journey through the Giudecca Canal and then docked on Venice ’s main island.

It was the first time a cruise ship had entered the lagoon since the pandemic hit Italy in February 2020.

In a place that is heavily dependent on tourism , and where cruise travel contributes about 3 percent of the local gross domestic product, many in Venice welcomed the ship.

But others did not. Among the latter were 2,000 protesters who met the MSC Orchestra when it sailed on its reverse route two days later. Some were on small boats on the Giudecca Canal; others chanted anti-cruise slogans from the waterfront.

“I hope we made some of the passengers wonder if what they were doing is wrong and think about the social and environmental impact of their vacation,” said Jane da Mosto, a biologist and activist who took part in the protest on a small boat.

The pandemic has put Venice ’s legendary international tourism influx on hold for more than a year. In doing so, it has sparked an animated debate on how mass tourism has negatively affected both the lagoon’s environment and Venice’s character. In this debate, cruise ships have become a metonym for overtourism.

The pandemic hiatus has given the city — which is celebrating its 1,600th birthday this year — a chance to reflect on how tourism’s exponential growth has eroded its social fabric, driving non-touristy businesses and residents out. In the past four decades the city’s historical center (what most Americans mean when they say “Venice”) has lost half of its residents, now down to 50,000.

“The situation is dramatic, there are no houses,” said Maria Fiano, 46, a high school teacher who runs OCIO, an organization that monitors Venice’s housing. According to her estimates , 42 percent of beds in the center are rented to tourists, which landlords find more profitable, leaving many locals struggling to find a place.

But not every tourist has the same cost-benefit ratio. While day trippers — including many of those who are cruise passengers — amount to 73 percent of visitors, they contribute only 18 percent of the tourism economy. The proportion is inverted for people who spend at least one night at a hotel; they represent 14 percent of visitors, but 48 percent of the business.

In March, the local government of Veneto, Venice’s region, approved a plan vowing to curb hit-and-run visitors and attract more slow-paced ones. They also hope to wean Venice off its over-dependency on tourism, creating new places of employment, including a hydrogen plant, a project still in its embryonic phase, and a recently launched accelerator for renewable energy businesses. “It’s the first time that local authorities formally recognized that mass tourism cannot go on like this forever and that depopulation is a serious problem,” said Fabio Moretti, the dean of Venice’s Academy of Fine Arts, which was involved in the plan along with other academic institutions and the Boston Consulting Group.

‘An act of violence against the city’

The presence of large ships in the lagoon, especially those in the immediate vicinity of Venice’s most precious sites, has raised eyebrows at UNESCO and sparked protests by residents since 2012. They argue that mammoth, fuel-guzzling ships are physically incompatible both with Venice, a two-square-mile island, and the lagoon that surrounds it. (A 2019 study published in Nature asserted that the wakes created by large vessels induced the erosion of the shoreline and, through the “continuous resuspension of sediment in the area,” could redistribute industrial pollutants already present in the lagoon.)

It’s not so much the number of visitors they bring overall — only 7 percent of the 27 million tourists who visited Venice in 2019 were cruise passengers, according to a recent study by the Boston Consulting Group — but the fact that they bring thousands of them all at once, overcrowding the city’s historical center while contributing little to its economy.

On average each cruise passenger injects about 200 euros into Venice’s economy, according to the same study, but most of that money goes to port taxes and other services, such as laundry and refueling, rather than city-center businesses like restaurants and museums.

“I’ve never interacted much with cruise tourists, they are rarely seen in places like mine,” said Andrea Degnato, 37, who manages a wine bar called Cantina Arnaldi.

Indeed, because they are often in too much of a hurry to linger in a wine bar, cruise visitors are seen as the opposite of the kind of tourists who would make Venice tourism more sustainable.

“People are unloaded here as a sack of potatoes, they hang around, thousands of them, just a couple of hours, buy a slice of pizza and go back,” said Silvia Jop, 37, a Venetian who works in cinema and cultural events. “If you add this to environmental damages, it’s an act of violence against the city.”

But she also acknowledges that cruises provide work to thousands of people, such as cleaners and porters, although most of them tend to be from the nearby mainland. “Their right to have a source of employment must be respected,” Ms. Jop said.

‘Like having an elephant in a china store’

For centuries, the Venetian Lagoon protected Venice. Built on a cluster of islands, the city could not be attacked from land, and the lagoon’s hard-to-navigate shallow waters and muddy seabed discouraged invaders from sea, who risked getting stranded. Thanks to this inaccessibility, Venice maintained its status as a maritime power throughout most of the Middle Ages.

But today Venice can be reached on cruise ships weighing up to 95,000 tons, docking directly in the heart of the old city.

“It’s like having an elephant in a china store,” said Diego Calaon, a scholar of ancient topography at Venice’s Ca’ Foscari University. He noted that, in its heyday in the late Middle Ages, Venice had a policy of preventing large vessels from docking on its shores, noting that they were much, much smaller than modern cruise ships.

Stretching 30 miles across the Adriatic and shielded from the open sea by two narrow islands, the lagoon is a shallow body of salt water , often less than 5 feet deep, crisscrossed by deeper trenches created by erosion or dug by man. It is only through these canals that vessels of a considerable size can navigate — and, even so, with difficulty: In 2019 a cargo ship was stranded in the eastern part of the lagoon, near Chioggia.

Venice’s historical center, a fish-shaped island in the middle of the lagoon, is skirted by one of its deepest canals, the Canale della Giudecca, where cruise ships currently pass, docking in the island’s main port, the Marittima. But this route is narrow, and dangerously close to the city. In another incident in 2019, a cruise ship lost control and crashed into a dock , injuring at least four people.

“We see only two solutions. Either these huge ships are kept out of the lagoon altogether, or the industry adapts to our environment and sends smaller ships,” said Tommaso Cacciari, a spokesman for the No Big Ships Committee , a grass-roots organization that since 2012 has been fighting the presence of cruise ships in the lagoon.

A new home for ‘the monster’?

On paper, cruise ships are already banned from Venice, if not from the lagoon entirely. In 2012 Italy’s Parliament approved a bill that banned ships over 40,000 tons from parts of the lagoon close to Venice’s main island. But the same law also says that the ban will be applicable only after a viable alternative route is found. Almost a decade later, authorities still haven’t found that alternative.

“We are kept in a limbo,” said Francesco Galietti, the national director for Italy of the Cruise Lines International Association. He added that as soon as the Italian government finds a solution, the industry is ready to comply with whichever alternative route is chosen. “Any solution that makes sense would work for us. The only thing we care about is keeping Venice as a home port for the Eastern Mediterranean.”

But anti-cruise activists argue that it’s unfair that the current law is conditional on finding a new port: “It’s like having a monster knocking on your door and, rather than chasing him away, you worry about finding a new home for the monster before forcing him to leave,” said Ms. da Mosto, the activist.

There are two main proposals: rerouting vessels toward Marghera, the lagoon’s main commercial port on the mainland, or building a port outside of the lagoon.

The problem with Marghera, said a representative of Venice’s Port Authority, is that “it’s a commercial port for containers, it’s not built for passengers.” Also, since Marghera is inside the lagoon, critics say that rerouting cruise ships there will do little to contain environmental damages.

As for building another port altogether: On April 1, Italy’s government approved the allocation of funds for a feasibility study for such a project. But the process of developing the plans for the project alone is expected to last until mid 2022, the Port Authority said, leaving little hope that a new port would provide a solution in the short or even medium term.

Halting cruise traffic until a new port is ready would take an economic toll. Before the pandemic, the cruise industry employed, directly and indirectly, 4,200 people in the area, according to the Port Authority, and brought revenues of 280 million euro (over $332 million), although most of that money does not go to Venice’s historical center.

In the meantime, UNESCO is getting impatient. Last month the agency released a report urging Italy’s government to prioritize “the option of banning large ships from the Lagoon altogether” and to set a time frame to “temporarily reroute ships” toward Marghera or elsewhere.

The agency also announced on the same day that it is considering adding Venice to its list of endangered World Heritage sites. “The recommendations for inscription on the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger are not sanctions but alerts to find solutions,” a representative for the agency said in an email statement, mentioning “mass tourism, especially with the presence of cruise ships” as one of the organization’s concerns.

But several government officials, speaking anonymously because Italy’s factitious coalition government is divided on the topic, said they’re feeling pressured by UNESCO and, more broadly, by the negative publicity Venice received when cruise ships returned after the pandemic. Recent protests have brought the attention of the international media on the issue, and Venice is hosting a G20 summit between July 8 and 11.

The summit will provide an opportunity for a hiatus. Authorities have issued a temporary halt on large cruise ships until at least July 18, citing a combination of security measures ahead of the summit and the upcoming Festa del Redentore, the annual festival celebrating the end of the plague that devastated the island in 1576.

Sources in the Italian government say progressives in the coalition are trying to push an extension on the temporary halt until the Marghera port is at least partially ready and hope the international attention brought by UNESCO’s rebuke and by the upcoming summit will help them put pressure on the issue. “We’re feeling the eyes of the world pointed at us,” said one official.

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Sustainable tourism in Italy - statistics & facts

How do italians feel about sustainable tourism, what is “agritourism”, key insights.

Detailed statistics

Familiarity with sustainable tourism among Italians 2011-2023

Perceived environmental issues of tourism according to Italians 2023

Italian tourists considering eco-friendly aspects when planning trips 2011-2023

Editor’s Picks Current statistics on this topic

Opinions on the environmental impact of tourism in Italy 2011-2023

Further recommended statistics

• Premium Statistic Familiarity with sustainable tourism among Italians 2011-2023
• Premium Statistic Opinions on the environmental impact of tourism in Italy 2011-2023
• Premium Statistic Perceived environmental issues of tourism according to Italians 2023
• Premium Statistic Italian tourists considering eco-friendly aspects when planning trips 2011-2023
• Premium Statistic Favorite transports seen as alternative to cars among Italians vacationers 2023

Share of individuals who reported being familiar with sustainable tourism in Italy from 2011 to 2023

Opinions on the environmental impact of tourism in Italy from 2011 to 2023

Perceived environmental issues caused by tourism according to Italians in 2023

Share of Italian tourists who consider environmentally friendly aspects when planning trips from 2011 to 2023

Favorite transports seen as alternative to cars among Italians vacationers 2023

Preferred transports seen as alternative to cars for short-haul holidays among Italians in 2023

Eco-friendly tourist facilities

• Premium Statistic Share of Italians interested in eco-friendly accommodation 2011-2023
• Premium Statistic Most appreciated services by eco-tourism hotels according to Italians 2023
• Premium Statistic Main features of eco-friendly hotels according to Italians 2023
• Premium Statistic Main features of sustainable restaurants according to Italians 2019

Share of Italians interested in eco-friendly accommodation 2011-2023

Share of Italian individuals who were interested in eco-friendly tourist accommodation establishments from 2011 to 2023

Most appreciated services by eco-tourism hotels according to Italians 2023

Most appreciated services offered by eco-tourism hotels according to Italians in 2023

Main features of eco-friendly hotels according to Italians 2023

Main features of eco-friendly hotels according to Italians in 2023

Main features of sustainable restaurants according to Italians 2019

Main features of sustainable restaurants according to Italian individuals in 2019

Agritourism

• Premium Statistic Number of agritourism establishments in Italy 2012-2022
• Premium Statistic Number of agritourism facilities in Italy 2016-2020, by type
• Premium Statistic Number of beds in agritourism establishments in Italy 2010-2022
• Premium Statistic Tourist arrivals in agritourism establishments in Italy 2015-2022, by tourist type
• Premium Statistic Arrivals in agritourism establishments in Italy 2022, by region
• Premium Statistic Overnight stays in agritourism establishments in Italy 2015-2022, by tourist type
• Premium Statistic Tourist overnight stays in agritourism establishments in Italy 2019-2022, by region

Number of agritourism establishments in Italy 2012-2022

Number of agritourism establishments in Italy from 2012 to 2022

Number of agritourism facilities in Italy 2016-2020, by type

Number of agritourism facilities in Italy from 2016 to 2020, by type

Number of beds in agritourism establishments in Italy 2010-2022

Number of beds available in agritourism establishments in Italy from 2010 to 2022 (in 1,000s)

Tourist arrivals in agritourism establishments in Italy 2015-2022, by tourist type

Number of tourist arrivals in agritourism establishments in Italy from 2015 to 2022, by type of tourist (in 1,000s)

Arrivals in agritourism establishments in Italy 2022, by region

Number of arrivals in agritourism establishments in Italy in 2022, by region

Overnight stays in agritourism establishments in Italy 2015-2022, by tourist type

Number of tourist overnight stays in agritourism establishments in Italy from 2015 to 2022, by type of tourist (in 1,000s)

Tourist overnight stays in agritourism establishments in Italy 2019-2022, by region

Number of tourist overnight stays in agritourism facilities in Italy from 2019 to 2022, by region (in 1,000s)

Educational farms

• Premium Statistic Number of educational farms in Italy 2017-2020
• Premium Statistic Number of educational farms in Italy 2020, by region
• Premium Statistic Agritourism facilities offering educational farm activities in Italy 2010-2019

Number of educational farms in Italy 2017-2020

Number of educational farms in Italy from 2017 to 2020

Number of educational farms in Italy 2020, by region

Number of educational farms in Italy in 2020, by region

Agritourism facilities offering educational farm activities in Italy 2010-2019

Number of agritourism facilities offering educational farm activities in Italy from 2010 to 2019

Cycling tourism

• Premium Statistic Overnight stays of tourist cycling in Italy 2019, by nationality
• Premium Statistic Spending of tourist cycling on holiday in Italy 2019, by nationality
• Premium Statistic Distribution of domestic tourists cycling on summer vacations in Italy 2020, by type
• Premium Statistic Share of domestic tourists cycling on summer vacations in Italy 2020, by bike type

Overnight stays of tourist cycling in Italy 2019, by nationality

Number of overnight stays by tourists cycling on holiday in Italy in 2019, by nationality (in millions)

Spending of tourist cycling on holiday in Italy 2019, by nationality

Spending of tourists cycling on holiday in Italy in 2019, by nationality (in billion euros)

Distribution of domestic tourists cycling on summer vacations in Italy 2020, by type

Distribution of domestic tourists cycling on summer holidays in Italy in 2020, by type of traveler

Share of domestic tourists cycling on summer vacations in Italy 2020, by bike type

Distribution of domestic tourists cycling on summer holidays in Italy in 2020, by type of bicycle

• Premium Statistic Main reasons for hiking in Italy 2020
• Premium Statistic Favorite accommodations among hikers in Italy 2020
• Premium Statistic Distribution of hikers in Italy 2020, by average daily spending
• Premium Statistic Main items purchased before a trip by hiking tourists in Italy 2020

Main reasons for hiking in Italy 2020

Main reasons for hiking according to individuals hiking in Italy in 2020

Favorite accommodations among hikers in Italy 2020

Preferred accommodations among individuals hiking in Italy in 2020

Distribution of hikers in Italy 2020, by average daily spending

Distribution of individuals hiking in Italy in 2020, by average daily spending

Main items purchased before a trip by hiking tourists in Italy 2020

Main items purchased before a trip by hiking tourists in Italy in 2020

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Italy's Battle with Problem Tourists

Italy wants its foreign tourists back but not at the expense of damage to its precious cultural heritage..

This summer's international headlines about tourists damaging Italy's sites and monuments weren't supposed to be like this. Just a few months ago there was much talk of rebuilding the country's tourist industry, devastated by a 10-week lockdown in the spring and the travel restrictions imposed by the covid-19 pandemic.

The relaunch was seen by the more optimistic in the sector as a golden opportunity to break away from the broken model of mass tourism, moving on from the bad old days of unruly visitors jumping in fountains and treating Italy's heritage with complacency or even downright disrespect.

There were grand plans of replacing selfie tourism with slow tourism, aimed at the more discerning visitor, who clutched a guide-book rather than a selfie stick.

• The Colosseum looks to a post covid-19 era

Alfonsina Russo is the director of Parco Colosseo, the archaeological park incorporating the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Domus Aurea, which attracted 7.5 million tourists last year. In a May interview with Wanted in Rome , Russo was frank about a situation that she believes must change for the better, saying she hoped the “new tourists” would visit out a “need for nourishment” from the priceless heritage she oversees.

In the past “it was clear that it was mostly a selfie tourism” – Russo said – “tied to tours of less than two hours, interested in the photo shoot sometimes without the awareness and the memory of that shot.”

Queuing at the Pantheon. Photo credit: Mastrullo / Shutterstock.com.

Russo's views were reflected by Eike Schmidt, the director of the Uffizi Gallery, who called for people to drop the “bucket list” approach in favour of savouring the moment through a “slow tourism” model. Florence mayor Dario Nardella echoed Schmidt by saying: "We want to use culture to send a message that after this crisis we want to change lifestyle models, the economy and model of tourism of the city."

• UN chooses Italy to restart global tourism

This optimism was enhanced in late June when Italy was chosen by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) as the launch pad for the global Restart Tourism drive after the coronavirus lockdowns around the world, with Italy hailed as a "world tourism leader."

With lockdown in March, Italy's tourist numbers plummeted overnight, leaving normally crowded Italian cities virtually deserted for months. This was most evident in Venice where up until last year residents complained that the streets and canals were thronged with too many people, before suddenly bemoaning their absence from the spring onwards.

• Venice activists cheer as cruise ships steer clear of canal city

The unexpected situation saw Venice scrap its controversial tourist tax which was scheduled to come into effect on 1 July. In recent weeks the much-maligned giant cruise ships decided to steer clear of the city's lagoon, opting for the larger Italian ports of Genoa and Trieste instead.

This news was welcomed by activists but protested by Venetian gondoliers and restaurateurs who will miss the revenue. The whole affair has served to put Venice's complicated relationship with tourists – and mass tourism – back into the spotlight as never before.

No sitting at the Spanish Steps. Photo credit: Daniele COSSU / Shutterstock.com.

Rome is another city whose bread and butter is the hospitality industry. The capital too has a love-hate relationship with its foreign visitors. In the past the city has been accused of a complacent attitude to tourists, a case of "chewing them up and spitting them out," while Romans are quick to point to incidents of ignorant tourists splashing in historic fountains or, worse, carving their names into the Colosseum.

As foreign visitors return to Italy in small numbers – 70 per cent less than last August according to the Demoskopika research institute – there has been one negative tourist story after another in the media.

• Covid-19: Italy loses 70 per cent of foreign tourists in August

The narrative tends to be the same. Once a tourist commits a crime against Italian heritage – be it accidental or on purpose – Italy’s much-needed visitor suddenly becomes the enemy. These “barbarians” are the subject of vitriolic posts on social media, facing suggestions of draconian punishments from having their hands chopped off to life imprisonment.

Selfies at the Trevi. Photo credit: Alessio Pierdomenico / Shutterstock.com.

The first "bad tourist" story this summer was in Venice in early June, the day after European tourists were allowed to re-enter Italy.

The incident involved two middle-aged men, reportedly German, who swam down the Grand Canal , laughing off pleas from locals to get out, as their partners filmed their antics. The tourists were later apprehended by police as they walked through the city barefoot, dressed in just their wet swimming costumes. Officers fined the men €450 each and ordered them to put some clothes on.

• Tourists fined after climbing into Roman Forum by night

In early August a group of young, and reportedly drunk, British tourists scaled the walls of the Roman Forum by night. The four tourists, aged between 17 and 19, were spotted by security guards who tipped off the carabinieri. The visitors were charged with trespassing and failure to respect a ban on entering the archaeological area, and were fined a total of €1,600 for their escapade.

Patrolling the Trevi Fountain. Photo credit: Enrico Tricoli / Shutterstock.com.

However all this was relatively harmless for what happened on 31 July at the Antonio Canova Museum in the northern Veneto region. An Austrian tourist, keen to take a selfie, sat down on Canova's plaster model for the Paolina Borghese masterpiece in Galleria Borghese. After sprawling back on its base, the tourist managed to snap off three of the statue's toes in his effort to stand up. Far from alerting museum authorities, the man made sure that nobody saw what he had done before doing a runner.

• Italy: tourist damages Canova sculpture after sitting on it for selfie

The news was announced by politician and art critic Vittorio Sgarbi, the president of the foundation in charge of the museum in Possagno, Canova's hometown. An outraged Sgarbi called on police to identify the "vandal" and "not let him return to his homeland unpunished" for the "unacceptable" damage caused to the work. For once, Sgarbi's views were shared by the majority, but still no trace of the offending tourist.

The tourist who damaged the Canova statue.

Within days Italian police managed to track him down, thanks to the Canova museum reservation made by his wife, upon which the 50-year-old man admitted his responsibility, as his case is sent before the public prosecutor's office in Treviso.

• Italy: Tourist climbs onto roof of Pompeii baths for selfie

In mid-August a police investigation began after a tourist climbed onto the roof of a bath house in Italy's archaeological site of Pompeii . The probe was launched after images of the unidentified woman surfaced on the internet, causing a storm of controversy on social media. Police are attempting to establish the identity of the visitor who was photographed while taking selfies on top of the bath house during the Ferragosto holiday.

Illegal selfies at Pompeii

The outgoing Pompeii manager Massimo Osanna said the woman's "deplorable" and “uncivil” behaviour was dangerous to both her and the ancient building. If caught, she could face imprisonment from three months to a year, with fines of between €1,000 and €3,000, reports Italian newspaper La Repubblica .

• Rome: tourists fined for engraving names at Trevi Fountain

Several days after this, two tourists, aged 61 and 44, were caught by Rome police as they used a coin to scrape their names into the staircase at the Trevi Fountain . The couple, from Germany and Slovakia, were reported for damaging a site of historical and cultural interest. They also received a fine of €450 and a temporary ban from returning to the monument. Rome mayor Virginia Raggi commended the police for their work, tweeting: "No tolerance for those who deface or damage the monuments of Rome."

• Rome: Tourist carves his initials into Colosseum

The trouble continued right to the end of the summer season. On 20 September a 32-year-old Irish tourist was caught carving his name into the Colosseum where, a few days earlier, a 40-year-old Polish tourist crash-landed his drone inside the ancient amphitheatre despite being reminded beforehand that it was strictly a no-fly zone.

As Italy juggles the fine line between restarting its devastated tourism sector with keeping new covid-19 cases to a minimum, it continues to face the thorny question of how to protect its artistic and cultural heritage from 'vandal tourists' and selfie tourism.

Perhaps the answer lies somewhere between increased vigilance and somehow ensuring that visitors are better prepared for the splendour – precious and fragile – that Italy has to offer.

By Andy Devane

This article is published in the September 2020 online edition of Wanted in Rome magazine .  Cover image - photo credit: MarbellaStudio / Shutterstock.com. 

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Dispatch: Without Tourism, Italy’s Economy Faces Disaster

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Without Tourism, Italy’s Economy Faces Disaster

Foreign visitors have helped prop up the faltering italian economy. if they don’t come back, the country is in trouble..

MILAN, Italy—On Feb. 16, twenty-year-old Linda Pani launched herself from St. Mark’s bell tower, hooked to a metal cable, and descended to the center of the square. It was the kickoff ceremony of Venice’s Carnival.

For the city’s economy, the weeklong Carnival is the most important event of the year, attracting up to 3 million visitors , filling hotels and Airbnbs, and bringing approximately 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) in revenue each year. But three days later the celebrations were canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the country.

For Venice, it was the beginning of an economic crisis.

Tourism is “Italy’s oil,” so goes a popular saying, a mantra that Italian politicians tend to repeat quite often , including League secretary Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio, the former leader of the Five Star Movement.

Tourism in Italy today amounts to 13 percent of the country’s GDP. It has created jobs, spurred development, and injected cash flow into the national economy.

But Italy isn’t exactly the tourist version of a petrostate. Unlike the Gulf kingdoms whose whole economies rest on a single product, Italy has a diversified, if embattled, economy: It has the second largest manufacturing output in the European Union, largely concentrated in the wealthy northern regions, and it’s well known for its export of wine, food, and luxury goods including designer clothes and high-end cars.

When people say tourism is Italy’s oil, they’re thinking more of Texas than Saudi Arabia. Tourism is a major source of income and has energized a broader economy with a trickle-down effect. Four million Italians are currently working in tourism or tourism-related activities, a significant portion of the country’s overall 23 million workforce .

It’s not that tourism is all that Italy has got. It’s that tourism is what is keeping Italy’s economy afloat. Last year, for instance, Italy’s industrial output shrank by 2.4 percent while tourism grew by 2.8 percent .

Italy has been a tourist destination for centuries, but the industry’s central role in the economy is a more recent phenomenon. Especially since Italy’s economy has stagnated for decades, and was particularly hit by the 2011 European financial crisis, tourism has provided a much-needed lifeline.

In a country plagued by unemployment, tourism offered jobs for guides, restaurateurs, waiters, cooks, and cleaners. The fact that Italy has a high percentage of home ownership allowed many families to turn their apartments or weekend houses into bed-and-breakfasts or Airbnbs. In the aftermath of the crisis, tourism provided a social safety net.

But the coronavirus lockdown changed all that—in Venice and across the country. For the first time in recent history, the city that was most ravaged by overtourism found itself with no tourists at all. And since Venice’s whole economy revolves around mass tourism, the sudden transition has already resulted in a massive employment crisis: 20,000 jobs have been lost in the area.

But Venice is far from being an isolated case in Italy. Florence and Rome are facing similar situations. In fact, Florence’s mayor said he’s thinking of mortgaging some of the city’s historical monuments—effectively telling banks, if the city can’t pay its debt, take the Uffizi Gallery.

The crisis is real in Florence; the Tuscan city used to draw $52 million in tourism taxes each year (that hotels or Airbnb hosts pay for each day a guest stays), but this year there will be almost no tourism tax revenue, so the city has no way to pay its bills.

Other tourist hot spots, like Cinque Terre , the five picturesque villages in the Ligurian Riviera, and Sicily’s islands, are now deserted as well. In order to attract foreign tourists, Sicily has vowed to help pay for their flights and offer a free night for every two nights after Italy reopens for visitors in June.

The first international visitors arrived in Italy in the 1600s, when young European aristocrats took the habit of visiting Rome, Venice, and Sicily to breathe in some Renaissance arts and classical antiquity.

More recently, in the mid-1900s, Italy was a major international destination, much before mass global tourism became the norm.

For the first time in recent history, the city that was most ravaged by overtourism found itself with no tourists at all.

But during the 1990s, tourism surged. The internet and low-cost flights revolutionized international travel, allowing a growing number of people to move at an affordable price across the world, and Italy’s heritage-rich cities saw it as an opportunity. “Italian cities heavily invested in tourism. Their historical centers were redeveloped as consumer objects,” said Alessandro Coppola, an urban sociologist at the Polytechnic University of Milan.

The fact that, around the same time, the country’s economy began stagnating made mass tourism particularly attractive to otherwise impoverished Italians. Some Italians, including many political leaders, convinced themselves that Italy could simply live off tourism. “Southern Italy could live off tourism 11 months each year,” a prominent League politician once said . The country’s natural and artistic beauty, so went their reasoning, would always be there as a safety net. But they were lulling themselves into a false sense of security.

To be fair, the illusion was a convincing one. “Tourism is like a heavy industry,” said Marco d’Eramo, the author of Il selfie del mondo , a book on mass tourism that will soon be published in English. “It’s that kind of industry that kicks off other industries, such as commercial aviation.”

Of course, mass tourism has its downsides: It has a negative impact on the environment and on quality of life, for instance by raising rental prices and pushing out residents who can no longer afford them . (In Rome, for instance, the historical center has lost about 20,000 residents.) But in Italy, and especially in certain areas, the main problem is that mass tourism has become the only source of income.

Venice, for instance, used to be an industrial hub: Port Marghera, on the mainland but within the city’s limits, hosted major chemical and metal industries, employing 30,000 workers at its peak in the 1970s, but has been in steady decline since the late 1980s. Today, only 5,000 people work in the local industries.

D’Eramo compares it to a “monoculture,” or the practice of growing a single crop on a mass scale, which has historically exposed those who practiced it to the risks of famine when that crop is endangered.

For decades, Italy’s leaders convinced themselves that international travelers could keep the economy afloat; now, with the economy in freefall—and its GDP still below its pre-2008 level—they will have to navigate without them.

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As other European cities plagued by overtourism, such as Barcelona and Amsterdam , were trying to curb it and rely on other industries, Italian authorities either encouraged it or did very little to discourage it. For instance, in Venice, where some residents were protesting the presence of massive cruise ships in the city’s lagoon, Mayor Luigi Brugnaro attacked the protesters, calling them “ cheesy .”

Magda Antonioli Corigliano, who heads the master’s program in tourism economics at Milan’s Bocconi University, notes that the industry is now heavily dependent on foreign visitors. “At the end of 2019, international tourism in Italy has surpassed national tourism,” she said.

Some Italians, including many political leaders, convinced themselves that Italy could simply live off tourism. But they were lulling themselves into a false sense of security.

That is now making the country’s economy particularly vulnerable to the consequences of the pandemic. Italy is one of the nations most severely hit by the virus. And while the government has announced a plan to have national tourism partially restarted in the summer of 2020, the return of large numbers of international visitors seems unlikely in the short term.

“Tourism works well for a country when it’s a secondary activity, but for Italy it wasn’t a secondary activity, and now the country doesn’t have a plan B,” argued Claudio Visentin, a historian at the University of Lugano. International tourism in Italy had been steadily growing for a decade , but with the pandemic its collapse was sudden. “It was like a speeding car crashing into a wall, with no airbag,” Visentin said.

After decades of putting all their eggs in one basket, Italian cities will have to come up with new solutions.

The IUAV University of Venice has recently brokered an agreement to convert empty B&Bs into student apartments. Before the pandemic, landlords preferred to rent to tourists because it was more profitable, forcing university students to commute from nearby towns. Now, they hope to bring more students to live, and thus consume, in the city—partially replacing the void left by international visitors.

For decades, Italy’s leaders convinced themselves that international travelers could keep the economy afloat; now, with the economy in freefall, they will have to navigate without them.

In Florence, a citizen’s association urged authorities to focus investments in industry and craftsmanship, rather than in trying to lure back mass tourism. In Rome, two famous urbanists, Vezio De Lucia and Enzo Scandurra, suggested that the city seize the opportunity to bring working-class families back to the historical center, converting some empty publicly-owned apartments into subsidized housing.

There’s a feeling that cities plagued by overtourism are finally realizing they need to rethink themselves. The crisis has spurred some creative thinking, but so far most of the ideas are either vague or small-scale solutions. No one seems to have a clear, and ambitious enough, plan B. Until Italy finds one, the tourism crisis risks bringing down the country’s economy.

Giorgio Ghiglione is a freelance writer in Milan. His work has appeared in the Guardian , Al Jazeera , and Internazionale . Twitter:  @giorgioghiglion

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The Economic and Social Implications of Mass Tourism in Rome

• Italy , Rome , Travel
• June 15, 2023

Too Many Tourists In Rome?

Mass tourism in Rome is nothing short of a blight on it’s beauty, culture and vibe. On one hand, it generates revenue and creates jobs in the hospitality and retail industries, but on the other, it leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. The city’s infrastructure is stretched to breaking point, and its cultural heritage is being erased. This is the grim reality of the economic and social implications of mass tourism in Rome. So, travel like a local … when in Rome do as the Romans do, this is the best things to do in Rome .

The Economic Side Of Things

Let’s start with the economics of the situation. Yes, it’s true, tourism has created jobs and brought in revenue. However, it’s also true that small business owners are struggling to compete with multinational corporations who have taken over much of the city’s tourist hotspots. As a result, small businesses are closing, and low-wage workers are losing their jobs. This is the price of progress, I suppose, but it’s not progress worth celebrating.

And what of the high cost of living? The large number of visitors to Rome has driven up the cost of housing, food, and other necessities, making it difficult for local residents to afford to live in their own city. This is a bitter pill to swallow, and it’s not surprising that some residents feel resentful. They see their city being taken over by tourists, and their quality of life deteriorating as a result.

The Social & Cultural Side Of Things

Now, let’s turn to the social and cultural implications of mass tourism in Rome. The city’s infrastructure is at breaking point, with overcrowding, traffic congestion, and air pollution becoming increasingly commonplace. This is the price of having too many people in one place, and it’s not a price worth paying.

Furthermore, the influx of tourists has disrupted the local culture, transforming traditional neighborhoods and historic sites into tourist hotspots. This is cultural vandalism on a grand scale, and it’s a tragedy that the unique character and heritage of Rome is being erased in this way. The loss of the city’s unique character and cultural heritage has a negative impact on the sense of community and has created a sense of resentment among residents.

Gentrification is another social issue associated with mass tourism in Rome. The rapid influx of tourists and the demand for high-end hotels, restaurants, and shops have led to the redevelopment of many traditional neighborhoods. This has displaced many long-time residents, altering the character of the city, and creating a sense of resentment.

What About The Locals? What Do Romans Think?

Finally, mass tourism has led to a decline in the quality of life for local residents. The large number of visitors has resulted in overcrowding, noise pollution, and other environmental problems. In addition, the influx of tourists has made it difficult for residents to access certain services, such as healthcare and public transportation, which are often overwhelmed by demand.

To Wrap It All Up – Do As The Romans Do?

In conclusion, mass tourism in Rome is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it generates revenue and creates jobs, but on the other, it leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. The high cost of living, gentrification of historic neighborhoods, and strain on the city’s infrastructure are just some of the negative impacts of mass tourism. It’s time for the city to develop a more sustainable tourism strategy that balances the needs of tourists and local residents. This could include limiting the number of visitors, promoting responsible tourism practices, and investing in infrastructure to support sustainable growth.

But let’s not hold our breath; after all, greed and thoughtless exploitation often win out over common sense and responsibility.

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The impact of COVID ‐19 on international tourism flows to Italy: Evidence from mobile phone data

Valerio della corte.

1 Directorate General for Economics, Statistics, and Research, Bank of Italy, Roma Italy

Claudio Doria

Giacomo oddo, associated data.

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon request from the corresponding author, with the only exception of mobile phone data, as they were purchased from a private mobile phone company and cannot be made publicly available due to ownership restrictions. Data from the survey on international tourism in Italy (see Section Data annex in Appendix  1 for details) can be freely downloaded from the official website of the Bank of Italy in the following section: Home/Statistics/External transactions and positions/International tourism/Distribution of microdata.

This paper analyses the response to the COVID‐19 pandemic of inbound tourism to Italy looking at variation across countries and provinces. To this end, it uses weekly data on the number of foreign visitors in Italy from January 2019 until February 2021, as provided by a primary mobile telephony operator. We document a very robust negative relation at the province level between the local epidemic situation and the inflow of foreign travellers. Moreover, provinces with a historically higher share in art‐tourism, and those that used to be ‘hotel intensive’ were hit the most during the pandemic, while provinces with a more prevalent orientation to business tourism proved to be more resilient. Entry restrictions with varying degrees of strictness played a key role in explaining cross‐country patterns. After controlling for these restrictions, we observed that the number of travellers that could arrive by private means of transportation decreased proportionally less. Overall, this evidence emphasises that contagion risk considerations played a significant role in shaping international tourism patterns during the pandemic.

1. INTRODUCTION

The outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic in the early months of 2020 caused unprecedented disruption to tourism flows. 1 According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), in 2020 international arrivals worldwide dropped by 74% (1 billion arrivals less than the previous year). Italy, a country for which the tourism industry is very important, 2 was among the first EU countries to be hit by the pandemic: between February and April 2020, positive cases rapidly rose from a few hundreds to over a hundred thousand, with a surge in the number of patients needing intensive care and in the number of deaths. 3

Fear of contagion and containment measures (including travel bans) resulted in tourism flows dropping to near‐zero levels since the end of March 2020. During the second quarter of 2020 conditions improved, allowing for the lifting of travel restrictions at the EU level in the summer. Italy, among other southern European countries (Spain, Portugal and Greece), benefited from the recovery of cross‐border tourism, although flows remained at around a half of pre‐pandemic levels. The second wave of the pandemic that hit Italy after the end of the summer halted again tourism flows. Overall, in 2020 foreign travellers' expenditure in Italy fell by about three fifths compared with previous year (from €44 to 17 billion), and the travel surplus of the balance of payments was halved to 0.5 per cent of GDP (from 1.0 per cent in 2019).

In this context, the adequate design and evaluation of policy responses clearly requires a thorough understanding of how inbound tourism is affected by contagion risk and to containment measures of different intensity. In particular, two main questions deserve closer investigation to inform policy decisions. The first is to what extent the fall in foreign arrivals reflects not only regulatory restrictions and containment measures (travel bans, quarantines, etc.) but also fears of contagion that spontaneously lead travellers to stay away from destinations with a locally higher epidemiological risk. Answering this question is highly relevant from a policy perspective: lifting restrictions while the epidemic is still not under control might not be sufficient to revamp tourism flows if travellers' behaviour actively responds to the risk of contagion. In fact, it may affect tourists decision in the future period.

The second related question is how travel preferences changed in reaction to the pandemic, looking at characteristics that were indirectly related to contagion risk, such as transport means, type of accommodation and amenities at the destination. A proper understanding of these factors is needed to formulate reasonable predictions about which destinations are going to record a larger drop in tourism inflows, so that adequate policy responses can be prepared. Understanding how tourists react to travel restrictions of varying intensity (from quarantine requirements to screening tests) would also be useful for the same purpose.

This paper uses a unique combination of weekly mobile phone data and survey data for Italy to provide answers to the above questions, through an overarching analysis of international tourism flows during the pandemic. The high frequency of mobile phone data on the number of foreign visitors by nationality and province allows us to identify precisely the impact of changing patterns in the epidemics and of the adopted policy measures. We estimate reduced‐form models (consistent with a gravity framework) where the number of foreign travellers in a given location is related to the risk of contagion in the province of stay as well as in the source country, controlling for an extensive set of fixed effects. We also look at how structural characteristics of destinations shaped the dynamics of tourism flows in interaction with the contagion dynamics. We provide compelling evidence that travellers paid a lot of attention to contagion risk during the second wave of contagion—when travel restrictions were looser—avoiding local Italian destinations with a higher number of COVID‐19 cases. Furthermore, destinations that were perceived as ‘less risky’ by tourists (for instance because they were reachable by private means of transport or had a larger share of private accommodations), were hit less, all other things being equal.

This paper is at the intersection of two strands of literature. The first and larger strand is about the adverse effects that infectious diseases cast on the economy, and on tourism in particular. It received an important boost in the 2000s, after the outbreak of the SARS and the ‘aviary flu’ in Asia (Chou et al.,  2004 ; Hanna & Huang,  2004 ; McKercher & Chon,  2004 ), followed by studies on MERS (Joo et al.,  2019 ) and the H1N1 influenza (Rassy & Smith  2013 ). All of these studies show that the tourism sector was hit the hardest, finding a negative relationship between contagion dynamics and foreign arrivals. In particular, Hanna and Huang ( 2004 ) find that the impact was higher in regions characterised by higher population density, higher mobility of people, and where public health infrastructure was less developed. Chou et al. ( 2004 ) conclude that a failure in disclosing the actual number of SARS cases can deliver additional GDP loss in the longer run, pointing to the fact that not only international travellers but also foreign investors need accurate information on the dynamic of the epidemic. More recently, Cevik ( 2020 ) compares the impact of different kind of diseases on bilateral tourism flows, showing that the impact on tourism is due more to the contagiousness of the disease than to its severity, and that negative effects are stronger for developing countries.

With the outbreak of COVID‐19, the first truly global pandemic after the 1918–1919 influenza (so‐called ‘Spanish flu’), a large and growing bulk of papers was added to this workstream. Given the pervasiveness of the shock and the strictness of countermeasures that were adopted worldwide, studies have analysed the impact not only on tourism but also on trade of goods (Bas et al.,  2022 ; Berthou & Stumpner,  2022 ; Liu et al.,  2021 ) and services in general (Ando & Hayakawa,  2022 ; Minondo,  2021 ). 4 The present crisis is in fact characterised by quick and wider developments, impacting all countries across the globe. As regards impact of COVID‐19 on tourism, existing studies are largely descriptive (MacDonald et al.,  2020 ; Metaxas & Folinas,  2020 ; Uğur & Akbıyık,  2020 ; see Sigala,  2020 for a preliminary survey) or focus on specific segments of the tourism industry, such as short‐term rental: Hu and Lee ( 2020 ) quantify the impact of lockdown on global AirBnB bookings. Focusing on the European short‐term rental market, Guglielminetti et al. ( 2021 ) find that the epidemic reduced markedly both the supply of apartments available for rents and the consumers' demand. Our paper contributes to this literature with a rich econometric analysis of the effects of COVID‐19 on foreign arrivals in Italy. We believe that Italy is an ideal setting for this analysis, for three reasons. First, it is one of the largest exporters of tourism services (Italian tourism exports rank sixth in the world, according to UNWTO), so it is a very relevant case study. Second, it is endowed with a well‐diversified range of destinations associated with different travel purposes (business trips, art visits, beach or mountain holidays, etc.), and it attracts visitors from a very diverse set of departure countries, which allows to study the interaction between characteristics of both local destinations and countries of departure. Third, the significant heterogeneity in the spread of contagion across the country allows a quite neat identification of the response of tourism to the differential level of the epidemic among local destinations, while controlling for developments at the country level. This allows us to draw several conclusions on the response of international tourism to the pandemic which are potentially useful for policymaking purposes.

The second strand of literature this study is related to is the growing number of research papers using location data derived from mobile phone networks for the analysis of mobility and consumer behaviour (Hu et al.,  2009 ; Tucker & Yu,  2020 ). Mobile phone data have been used in behavioural studies for almost two decades (Spinney,  2003 ) and the use of this data for tourism analysis is not entirely new. 5 The availability of such data accelerated when smartphones massively replaced first‐generation mobile phones. As this paper confirms, this type of data has become a very valuable complement to more conventional data sources (e.g. survey data), especially for tourism analysis.

The paper is structured as follows: Section  2 provides descriptive evidence on the changes that occurred in incoming tourism flows after the pandemic along various dimensions, paving the way for the subsequent econometric analysis. Section  3 presents the database and the empirical model adopted to measure the impact of the pandemic on the incoming tourism flows and its interaction with variables at the province and the country of departure level. In Section  4 , we present and discuss estimation results, robustness evaluations and economic interpretation of regression coefficients. Finally, Section  5 summarises our findings and draws concluding remarks.

2. AGGREGATE PATTERNS OF FOREIGN TOURISM FLOWS IN ITALY

This section of the paper presents the main aggregate patterns in foreign tourism to Italy in 2020, highlighting the heterogeneous impact of the pandemic. This evidence guides us in the selection of relevant variables for the empirical model presented in Section  3 .

The COVID‐19 disease started to spread in Italy in the second half of February 2020. The lockdown was applied initially in selected Northern provinces and, since March 9, in the entire country. It included a stay‐at‐home order, the shutdown of all non‐essential economic activities and restrictions to both internal and international mobility. In this phase, the outbreak remained concentrated in Northern Italy. These restrictions were lifted during the month of May 2020. The strong containment measures proved to be effective in halting the spread of the disease, and Italy benefited of near‐zero rate of new COVID‐19 cases throughout the summer. In early June travel restrictions between EU member countries, Schengen Area countries and United Kingdom were lifted, and inbound tourism gradually resumed. New case rates started picking up again at the end of August, and in the fall a second wave of contagion hit Italy throughout the country, with virtually no province spared from a rise in infections.

According to official statistics, in 2020 foreign visitors in Italy (i.e. including those who did not stay in Italy overnight) were 39 million overall, about 60% less than the previous year. 6 The drop in inbound tourism was sharp from all countries of origin, but particularly severe from farther countries (Table  1 and Figure  1 ): the number of arrivals from Europe (both EU and non‐EU) decreased by 56.2% with respect to 2019; those from the Americas and Asia fell by 87% and 81% respectively.

Changes in the number of foreign travellers in Italy.

Source : BISIT data. Changes refer to 2020 with respect to 2019.

Changes in the number of foreign arrivals by area of origin and new COVID‐19 cases. Lines represent monthly foreign arrivals in 2020 vis‐à‐vis the corresponding months in 2019 in percentage terms (scale on the left‐hand axis). Histograms (scale on the right‐hand side axis) represent the number of new COVID‐19 cases occurred in Italy in each month.

These patterns were likely affected by the travel bans adopted in many countries throughout the world (including Italy), but they may also reflect a preference by foreign tourists for destinations closer to home that can be reached by private means of transport. Indeed, the drop of arrivals in regions closer to Italian borders (such as Veneto and Lombardy) was relatively smaller than in the other regions.

The pandemic also induced changes along the dimension of the travel's motive, as suggested by the correlation between the ex ante shares of various travel purposes in each Italian province (which capture their ‘touristic specialisation’) and the change in arrivals between 2019 and 2020 (Figure  2 ). 7 Arrivals dropped systematically more in provinces specialised in cultural tourism purposes, while this correlation is weaker for ‘sea and nature’ holidays. The correlation is instead positive in the case of business tourism, meaning that the provinces that used to have a relatively higher share of tourism related to business reasons suffered much less in terms of decline in foreign arrivals.

Correlation between change in arrivals and travel purpose shares at province level. Each dot represents an Italian province. In all graphs, vertical axis reports the drop in arrivals between 2019 and 2020 in % terms, while horizontal axis reports the share of travellers that used to visit the province before 2020 for the specified travel purpose.

Finally, another relevant change was observed along a third dimension of interest: the type of accommodation chosen by visitors during their sojourn in Italy. As shown in Table  2 , comparing 2020 data with the pre‐COVID‐19 three‐year period (2017–2019), shares of ‘traditional’ accommodations (hotel, B&B, tourist resort) decreased significantly (for over 14 percentage points), mainly to the advantage of independent non‐shared accommodations (rented houses or own properties) or other less common accommodations (campers, tents, caravans, etc.). The share of visitors who stayed at home with relatives or friends during their sojourn also grew significantly.

Accommodation choices pre‐ and post‐COVID‐19.

Note : ‘Other accommodations’ includes also camping, caravans and farmhouses.

Source : BISIT data. All values are shares. Values for 2017–2019 are averages.

3. THE HETEROGENEOUS IMPACT OF COVID ‐19 ON TOURISM: DATA AND EMPIRICAL MODEL

3.1. data sources and variables definition.

We combine various sources of information about tourism, epidemiological patterns and policy measures, to build a comprehensive and detailed dataset for our empirical exercise. The dataset covers the period from January 2019 to February 2021.

Two main sources are used for tourism data, to quantify the number of foreign tourists and to gather information on tourism characteristics. The first source of data comes from a primary Italian mobile phone operator. It provides the total number of foreign phone SIM cards on the Italian territory, by province and by issuer country. We use the former as information about the province of destination and the latter as a proxy for the country of origin of the traveller. Mobile phone data are available at a daily frequency (we aggregate them into weekly data). This source provides several important advantages. First, the data cover also the months in which the Bank of Italy Survey on International Travel was discontinued because of the restrictions against the spread of the pandemic. Second, the higher (weekly) data frequency allows to assess the impact that the contagion dynamics and the policy responses had on tourism patterns in a much more precise way than what could be done with monthly data: for instance, we can match the increase in cases occurred in a given week with the tourism flows observed in subsequent weeks, while controlling for the travel restriction in place in that specific week of the year. Finally, the extensive coverage provided by mobile phone data allows to look at combinations of ‘country of origin – province – time’ that in BISIT data may be subject to significant measurement error (e.g. for smaller countries and provinces). One limitation however is that the number of foreign tourists derived from mobile phone data may be distorted by the presence of communities of foreign residents in Italy. To avoid this potential bias, in our analysis we considered the first 40 countries, in terms of the number of tourists in 2017–2019, excluding those having large communities of residents in Italy. The selected countries account for about 94 per cent of the total inbound tourism flows to Italy (over the period 2017–2019); half of them belong to the European Union. 8

The second source of tourism data is the Bank of Italy Survey on International Tourism (BISIT). The survey questionnaire asks the interviewed traveller to provide information about the kind of transportation used to reach the destination, the purpose of the trip and the type of accommodation used during the trip (if any). We use data for the period 2017–2019 to construct indicators before the pandemic outbreak: for each province and origin, we quantify the shares of travellers by travel purpose, accommodation type and means of transport.

The epidemiological data regarding the spread of the contagion in Italy are sourced from the Italian Civil Protection Department. 9 At province level, the only available information is the cumulative number of positive COVID‐19 cases, at a daily frequency. From this, we compute the number of new cases of COVID‐19 (gross of recovered patients) over a period of 14 days, per 1000 inhabitants. The resident population in the province at the end of 2019 is retrieved from ISTAT, the Italian national statistical institute.

The corresponding information on the evolution of COVID‐19 in the foreign countries of origin was obtained from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which provides harmonised and comparable data on the rate of contagion in all European countries and in all other non‐European countries considered in our analysis.

As for the containment measures adopted by foreign countries, we used the Oxford Stringency Index (Hale et al.,  2021 ), which reflects restrictions to different aspects of economic and social life, such as mandatory closure of schools and offices to remote functioning, shops and restaurants closures, restrictions on public transportation and international travel bans. To control for the different intensity of the restrictions by Italian regions enforced since November 2020, we relied on the index developed for Italy by Conteduca ( 2021 ). 10

We also constructed a set of dummies related to the intensity of bilateral travel restrictions enforced by the Italian Government. This information was collected from the legislation acts adopted throughout the period, also relying on the website ‘ reopen.europa.eu ’, and on the website of Italy's Foreign affairs Ministry ‘ www.viaggiaresicuri.it ’.

Finally, variables on bilateral distance were retrieved from the CEPII data warehouse (Mayer & Zignago,  2011 ).

3.2. The empirical strategy

Our empirical exercise aims at explaining the heterogeneous impact of COVID‐19 on international tourism to Italy disentangling the contribution of various factors at the province and the country‐of‐origin level. In practice, the empirical strategy relies on two mirror‐like reduced‐form models for inbound tourism to Italy that are in line with a gravity framework. We estimate those models using the Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimator on weekly data from January 2019 to February 2021. 11

Our first model estimates the effects of contagion at the province level and of province's characteristics, while controlling for time‐varying characteristics of tourists' countries of origin with fixed effects (Equation  1 ).

The dependent variable, Tourists opt , is the total number of days spent by tourists from country o in province p at time t , where temporal unit t denotes a combination of year‐week. Our identification strategy exploits the granularity of the data set, and it includes an extensive set of fixed effects to control for unobservable factors. Country–province–week factors ( α opw ) control for the preference of travellers from a specific country for a specific province p in a week w . 12 Such preferences may be motivated by the availability of convenient flight connections, by business links and of course by the characteristics of the touristic offer of the destination compared to the domestic market (for instance, German tourists may favour beach destinations in Italy in summer weeks relatively more than French tourists, because France also offers attractive seaside destinations to domestic tourists). We also include time‐varying factors related to the country of departure α ot , which control for all developments that occurred at time t in the country of departure, in Italy, or third countries, that could affect the number of arrivals (for instance in terms of the epidemic or in containment measures). 13

Our main explanatory variable in Equation ( 1 ) is cases pt  − 1 , which is the number of new COVID‐19 cases on 1000 inhabitants that were recorded in the province during the previous 2 weeks, a commonly used metric to measure epidemic developments. This variable allows us to verify whether tourists were concerned about the level of contagion risk not only at the country level (which is captured by the fixed effects) but also at the local level. Indeed, information on local developments of the COVID‐19 epidemic is widely and easily available on the web. Therefore such information may be consulted by travellers before travelling to a given country, in order to avoid destinations where the epidemic is spreading faster.

To elicit the effect of the pandemic outbreak on tourists' choices, we interact variables Purpose op , Accommodation op and Transport op with a dichotomic variable that marks the COVID‐19 period, taking value one from the last week of February 2020 onward. These variables are vectors of shares extracted from BISIT data for the years 2017–2019, as explained in Section  3.1 . Purpose op reports the shares of various purposes of the trips, as declared by foreign travellers from country o when they visited province p before the pandemic: ‘art and culture holiday’, ‘sea and nature holiday’, ‘other purposes trip’ and ‘business reasons’ (the latter being the base category). These shares are computed for each season to take into account possible seasonality in the purpose of travel for some destination.

In the same fashion, Accommodation op reports the shares of various accommodation choices made by travellers: ‘hotels and hostels’, ‘camping, farmhouses, and caravans’, ‘day‐trip (and others)’, which is associated with no accommodation at all or with alternative types of accommodation, and the base category ‘own house, or hosted by relatives/friends, or at a rented house/flat’. Finally, Transport op indicates the shares of transports typologies chosen by travellers from country o to reach their destination p before the pandemic. We classified them into two categories: (i) collective and/or mass transports (planes, ships and trains) and (ii) individual/private transports (cars, caravans, bikes and motorcycles), our base category.

As mentioned, we estimate the model by Pseudo Poisson Maximum Likelihood regression—PPML, in line with the literature on gravity models of trade (Santos Silva & Tenreyro,  2006 ). 14 An advantage of PPML is that it allows the inclusion of null observations, namely provinces that tourists from country o visited in week w in 2019 but they did not visit in 2020. In our case, these are potentially meaningful observations as they refer to flows that were hit the hardest by the pandemic. Moreover, PPML is a consistent estimator in presence of heteroskedasticity (even if the dependent variable does not follow a Poisson distribution) and lends itself well to model count variables, as it is our dependent variable. In our inference, we assume double‐clustering by country of departure–time and by province–time.

In a second step, we drop the country–time fixed effects α ot from the model and introduce variables related to the evolution of the epidemic, the containment measures, the bilateral entry restrictions imposed by Italy, and distance, to explain the cross‐country variation in international tourism inflows (Equation  2 ):

Here, we include fixed effects α pt to control for any factor at play at time t in province p (including COVID‐19) that can have an impact on inbound tourism in that province from any destination. This specification is thus designed to estimate the effects of variables indexed by ot (country‐of‐origin and time), exploiting variation across countries at time t , while controlling for time‐varying province‐specific pt factors.

We consider the following additional explanatory variables: cases ot − 1 is the number of new COVID‐19 cases over 1000 inhabitants over a period of 14 days ending in week t  − 1 in the country of departure o (Section  3.1 ). Entry restrictions ot is a set of dummies indicating the bilateral travel restrictions (if any) imposed by Italy vis‐à‐vis other countries. We distinguished between (i) the travel restrictions that allow entry from a country only for urgent and/or essential reasons, like health motives or repatriations ( Necessity only ot , IT ), (ii) restrictions that allow entry only for work reasons and/or upon a quarantine period ( Quarantine ot , IT ), (iii) restrictions that allow entry upon a negative result of swab test (either at arrival or before departure) ( Swab ot , IT ). Stringency ot is the Oxford Stringency index (which takes values in the 0–100 interval, depending on the intensity of containment measures adopted by the country o at time t ). 15

We further interact the indicator variable for the COVID‐19 period with two variables measuring distance, to check whether foreign tourists from closer countries reduced their presence in Italy relatively less than tourists from more distant countries, in addition to what is already captured by the variable Transport op , which varies by the province of destination p and country of departure o . These two variables are the logarithm of the bilateral population‐weighted distance between Italy and country o , and an indicator variable which is equal to one if the country has a common border with Italy. 16

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1. analysis by local destination.

Table  3 reports results from the estimation of the model in Equation ( 1 ). Column (1) includes only the ‘local contagion’ variable (new positive cases in the province) and the full set of fixed effects: the coefficient of the contagion variable is negative and statistically significant. Given our specification of fixed effects, it means that if a province records 100 new positive cases per 100,000 inhabitants more than other provinces over 2 weeks, that province will experience on average a reduction in the number of foreign tourists about 6 percentage points larger than other provinces in the subsequent week, ceteris paribus. The contagion variable remains highly significant, with a slightly larger coefficient (column 2), when we add controls for the interaction between province–country structural characteristics and a dichotomous variable signalling the start of the pandemic. 17 The remaining columns of Table  3 report the results for three different phases of the epidemic in Italy. The first phase goes from February 25th to June 2nd 2020, and it covers the lockdown period (column 3). The second phase includes the summer period until September 15th, a period characterised by a gradual recovery of inbound tourism and by negligible rates of new COVID‐19 cases (column 4). The third phase covers the second wave of contagion, and it extends from mid‐September 2020 to February 2021 (column 5). Estimation results show that the negative relation between the number of foreign arrivals and new COVID‐19 cases materialised only during the latter phase, which includes the second wave of COVID‐19. This period is in our view the most appropriate setting to study the impact of new cases on inbound tourism because it was characterised by milder travel restrictions, by a larger degree of awareness about the health situation and by more information accessible to tourists about the local evolution of the epidemic. 18 On the contrary, we do not include the cases variable for contagion when estimating the model for the summer period (column 4), given the extremely low number of new cases in most provinces during summertime, as otherwise the estimate would be driven by a few observations only. For similar reasons, when we include the cases variable and estimate the model for the first wave, we are aware that the subsequent results should be taken with caution, since the travel restrictions in place during that period effectively blocked all tourists, except those travelling for reasons of need or work. Indeed, the sign of the estimated coefficient over this period is found to be, counter‐intuitively, positive. This result could be however rationalised considering that during the first wave, contagion occurred overwhelmingly in northern regions of Italy, which were also the regions more frequented by foreigners travelling for business reasons. For instance, cross‐border workers, which typically work in northern Italy, could enter and exit the country even during the first wave. When we exclude from ‘the first wave’ estimation the countries bordering Italy (Table  A3 in Appendix  1 ), the significance of the coefficient on the ‘new cases’ vanishes for this period. 19

Analysis by province.

Note : The table presents results of the model 1 estimated over different periods. Columns (1) and (2) look at the whole sample (January 2019–February 2021). The 1st wave period (column 3) includes the weeks from 25 February to 2 June 2020. The Summer period (column 4) goes from 3 June to 15 September 2020. The 2nd wave (columns 5–7) goes from 16 September 2020 onward. The reference categories for the variable interacted with a dummy for the COVID‐19 period are, respectively, ‘business‐reasons’ for the purpose of travel, and ‘rented house or private house’ for the accommodation. The reference category for ‘airplane’ (short for public means of transport) is private means of transport (like own car). Standard errors, in parenthesis, are clustered by province–time and country of departure–time. Stars (***, ** and *) indicate statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 per cent, respectively. Fixed effects by country of departure–province–week ( α opw ) and country of departure–time ( α ot ) are always included.

Since early November 2020, new restrictive measures were introduced in Italy, based on an assessment of epidemiological risk at the regional level. After this policy change, epidemiological risk per se cannot be considered anymore the main explanatory variable for the decrease in inbound tourism, as internal mobility restrictions may also contribute to it, reducing the attractiveness of a province. We thus include in column (6) a one‐week lag of the regional restriction index (RR‐Index) constructed by Conteduca ( 2021 ). 20 As expected, we find the coefficient of the RR‐Index to be negative and statistically significant, meaning that tourists avoided provinces where more stringent restrictions were in place. Nevertheless, the coefficient of our contagion variable remains significant and almost unaffected in size, meaning that even after controlling for internal mobility restrictions, foreign tourists decreased more in provinces where contagion risk was higher, all other things being equal.

As a further robustness check, we replace the restriction index with region–time fixed effects (column 7). This structure of fixed effects is able to control for the new system of region‐based restrictions while also capturing the correlation of the epidemic within provinces of the same region. Yet, the contagion variable remains negative and significant, and only marginally lower, further corroborating the robustness of our results about the adverse effect of contagion on foreign arrivals. 21 Overall, this result suggests that tourists paid attention not only to the national dynamics of the epidemic (which in our case is captured by the country–time fixed effects α ot ) but also to local developments of the epidemic, with noteworthy policy implications: even at the local level, there is a trade‐off implied by loosening restrictions: on the one hand, it may attract more tourists in the short term; on the other hand, if more arrivals are associated with an increase in the number of cases, it may discourage inbound tourism later in time.

Results from the interaction between province–country structural characteristics and the COVID‐19 period also indicate that travellers took contagion risk into account in their decisions. The coefficients of these variables can be interpreted as the average differential impact of the outbreak of the pandemic across our observational units (country–province–week). Column (2) shows that provinces that were more ‘specialised’ in art and culture tourism were hit the hardest: a coefficient of −1.1 for art tourism means that an increase in 10 % in the proportion of tourists that used to visit the province for that purpose is associated to a 7 % larger drop in inbound tourism. The drop would be only about 4 % for provinces visited for beach or nature holidays, with tourism for personal reasons purposes (like leisure tourism) hit generally harder than business tourism (our base level). A possible driving factor underlying this result is related to the fact that trips motivated by work reasons were generally exempted by travel restrictions, hence visitors travelling for work reasons could come to Italy even when tourists that would visit for holiday reasons could not (for instance, this was the case during the first lockdown for visitors arriving from countries outside Europe). This may have favoured provinces receiving historically higher shares of business travellers, even in a period when conferences and big events were moved on virtual platforms or cancelled.

Results also show that provinces in which tourists used to stay in ‘hotel‐like’ accommodations were hit harder than provinces characterised by a larger share of private housing and/or rental houses (our base level). The latter type of accommodation may indeed be perceived as relatively safer by tourists, as it implies less social interaction with other people. Provinces with a higher share of tourists staying in ‘green’ accommodations, like camping and farmhouses, also appear to have been more resilient on average.

Finally, the third feature of interest under consideration is the means of transport used; in line with our expectations, provinces that used to have a larger share of visitors arriving by plane (or other shared means of transport, like train or ship) were hit harder, reflecting the perception of a higher risk of infection compared to private non‐mass transport means, like cars or caravans. Using an extreme case as an illustrative example, the number of visitors in a province from a country in which all tourists come by collective means of transport recorded a 30 % larger drop than a province in which tourists from the same country arrive by car.

The behaviour of these variables in the different sub‐samples is overall consistent to what described for the whole sample. In the summer, interestingly, the relative loss by hotel‐intensive provinces appears to be only a half than what estimated for the overall period, suggesting that during this period tourists may have been less concerned with contagion risk, consistently with the near‐zero cases in most provinces.

In Table  4 , we report several robustness tests of the result on the variable measuring contagion at the province level using different metrics and specifications, finding robust and statistically significant coefficients with a comparable size. First, we consider a longer temporal lag (4 weeks, rather than 1 week) to compute the number of new cases, to account for the fact that tourists may make their travel plans sufficiently in advance. We obtain a coefficient almost identical (column 2). 22 We further check against the effects of few big outliers by winsorising the variable cases p , t − 1 at the 1st and 99th percentiles. Doing so delivers an even higher coefficient (column 3). In column (4) we include a quadratic term, which we find to be significant, suggesting a non‐linearity in the impact of this variable on arrivals: in other words, tourists seem to refrain more from travelling to Italian locations when the notification rate of new positive cases becomes high. We then include the cumulative number of positive cases at the province level (column 5). This metric takes into account the hypothesis that tourists may be sensitive to the past dynamics of positive cases in the destination province, rather than only to the current situation (although the two variables are to some extent correlated). We find that the notification rate of new positive cases remains highly significant and of similar magnitude. 23 As a robustness check, we estimate the baseline model 1 in log‐linear formulation by OLS (column 6). The coefficient on our contagion variable again remains negative and statistically significant, and only marginally lower. Finally, we consider two sub‐samples: first, we limit the analysis to the first 40 provinces in terms of inbound tourism in previous years (column 7), obtaining similar results. Second, we exclude the first 2 months of 2021 from our sample, to rule out the possibility that our results are distorted by a change occurred in the way new positive cases were recorded before and after 15 January 2021 (before the date, new positive cases were counted based only on the results of PCR molecular tests, while after that date, positive cases detected through rapid antigenic tests were included in the counter for the number of cases). Our results remain substantially unchanged. 24

Analysis by province: Different measures of COVID‐19 spread.

Note : The table reports estimates of the model 1 over the period January 2019–February 2021, for different specifications of the variable measuring contagion at local level (columns 1–5). Column (6) report estimates of the model rewritten in log form and estimated with OLS. Column (7) restricts the sample to the first 40 provinces. Column (8) excludes the first months of 2021. The reference categories for the variable interacted with a dummy for the COVID‐19 period are, respectively, ‘business‐reasons’ for the purpose of travel, and ‘rented house or private house’ for the accommodation. The reference category for ‘airplane’ (short for public means of transport) is private means of transport (like own car). Standard errors, in parenthesis, are clustered by province–time and country of departure–time. Stars (***, ** and *) indicate statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 per cent level, respectively. Fixed effects by country of departure–province–week ( α o p w ) and country of departure–time ( α o t ) are always included.

Table  A2 shows the estimates of our model in Equation ( 1 ) in which only EU countries, Schengen members and the United Kingdom are included in the analysis. Travellers from these countries were allowed to enter Italy for tourism after June 3rd without quarantine requirements (unlike other countries), and they accounted for most of inbound tourism to Italy in our sample period. We obtain almost identical results. Finally, we estimate our model excluding travellers from countries sharing a common border with Italy to remove the impact of cross‐border workers. Again, we obtain similar results overall and an even larger coefficient on the contagion variable (Table  A3 ).

4.2. Analysis by country of departure

In this section we shift our focus to the variation of incoming tourism flows by country of departure of the tourists. To do so, as explained in Section  3.2 , we drop our Country–Time fixed effects and we augment our model with the variables described in Section  3 (Equation  2 ). We estimate the model over two sets of countries: the entire sample of 40 countries (Table  5 ) and the sub‐sample of ‘passport‐free’ countries (EU and Schengen Area member countries, and the United Kingdom, whose citizens from 3 June onward were allowed to enter Italy for touristic reasons without almost any quarantine requirements). This sub‐sample includes the countries that account for most of the inbound tourism in our period of analysis and that faced very similar restrictions, which makes them more comparable. 25

Analysis by country of departure: All countries.

Note : The table presents estimates of the model 2 over different periods for the first 40 countries in terms of tourism receipts to Italy. The 1 st wave period (column 1) includes the weeks from 25 February to 2 June 2020. The Summer period (column 2) goes from 3 June to 15 September 2020. The 2 nd wave, column (5), goes from 16 September 2020 onward. Variable cases ot − 1 was winsorised at the 1%–99% per cent level to mitigate possible measurement errors and outliers (there are cases in the original dataset where the number of new cases is negative). The model includes the variables X op (coefficients not shown), namely d COVID 19 * β 1 ′ Purpose op + β 2 ′ Accommodation op + β 3 ′ Transport op . Standard errors, in parenthesis, are clustered by province–time and country of departure–time. ***, ** and * indicate statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 per cent, respectively. Fixed effects by country of departure–province–week ( α opw ) and province–time ( α ot ) are always included.

Column (1) in Table  5 indicates that, unsurprisingly, the most important variables in explaining cross‐country variation in the presence of foreign tourists are related to the strictness of the bilateral travel restrictions imposed by Italy. The coefficient of the dummy variable Quarantine ot , IT (which takes value 1 if there is either a mandatory quarantine period for tourists coming from that country, or if entry for leisure tourism is forbidden), implies a reduction in tourist presence by about 60 per cent larger than what are recorded by countries not subject to this requirement. The relative drop in international tourism is even more dramatic when entry was allowed only for urgent/essential reasons. On the contrary, screening measures at entry (e.g. swab tests) cause a substantially milder reduction in entry flows: the coefficient of the dummy for swab test requirement indicates a 20 per cent decrease in tourism flows. In fact, the coefficient of the swab test requirement is not statistically different from zero when we limit the analysis to EU and Schengen countries (and United Kingdom; Table  6 ), suggesting that this type of screening could limit the international spread of contagion without significantly hampering inbound tourism flows.

Analysis by country of departure: EU, Schengen members and UK.

Note : The table presents estimates of the model 2 over different periods for EU countries, Schengen countries plus United Kingdom. These were the only countries for which after the first wave visits for holiday tourism were allowed without the need to quarantine and accounted for about two‐thirds of total tourism receipts in 2020. The 1 st wave period (column 1) includes the weeks from 25 February to 2 June 2020. The Summer period (column 2) goes from 3 June to 15 September 2020. The 2 nd wave, column (5), goes from 16 September 2020 onward. Variable cases ot − 1 was winsorised at the 1%–99% per cent level to mitigate possible measurement errors (there are cases in the original database where the number of new cases is negative). The model includes the variables X op (coefficients not shown), namely d COVID 19 * β 1 ′ Purpose op + β 2 ′ Accommodation op + β 3 ′ Transport op . Standard errors, in parenthesis, are clustered by province–time and country of departure–time. ***, **, and *Statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 per cent, respectively. Fixed effects by country of departure–province–week ( α opw ) and province–time ( α ot ) are always included.

A second result is related to the impact of distance. Our model includes the interaction between a dummy for the COVID‐19 period and the share of visitors that used to arrive at the local destination by plane or other public means of transport, which displayed a negative and statistically significant coefficient, pointing to the renewed importance of distance during the pandemic. We further add a variable measuring bilateral distance between Italy and the country of departure and a dummy for bordering countries. We find that distance also had an additional negative effect on the number of foreign travellers when we consider European countries, in particular during the summer months, suggesting that tourists preferred closer destinations, ceteris paribus. This remains true, with the only exception of the first wave, if we exclude countries bordering with Italy (Table  A4 ).

While we had clear priors about the coefficients of the above‐mentioned variables, we had ambiguous expectations about the effect of contagion and stringency measures in the country of departure. On one hand, an increase of COVID‐19 cases in the home country of the tourists may induce them to raise caution and curb their plans to travel abroad, given the uncertainty of the health situation at home. By the same token, a tightening in containment measures in the home country may produce a similar effect, also in consideration that future stronger containment policies may hinder the travel on the way back home or make it more costly (e.g. because of reduced number of flights). On the other hand, a surge of positive cases at home may push the tourist to travel abroad (if the destination is perceived as ‘safer’) to minimise contagion risk during holidays and/or avoid domestic restrictions (substitution effect).

As regards the new COVID‐19 cases variable, our results are inconclusive: the coefficient is not consistently different from zero in the whole sample (columns 1 and 2) in Table  5 , while it turns out to be negative on the sub‐sample of European countries (Table  6 , columns 2 and 5). Moreover, the coefficient is positive during the summer months while negative or not statistically different from zero afterward. 26 The coefficient of the stringency index is instead more stable, as we find consistent positive estimates over the whole sample (column 1 in Tables  5 and ​ and6). 6 ). The sign of the stringency index coefficient remains positive even if we separately introduce dummies that control for mobility restrictions at home (column 2). 27

A possible relevant source of cross‐country variation that we are not controlling for in column (1) stems from travel restrictions to outbound tourism in the countries of origin. Unfortunately, we do not have information on these restrictions. As a proxy remedy to this concern, we include a categorical variable from the Oxford database (Hale et al.,  2021 ) that measures the strictness of travel restrictions to inbound tourism in the tourist's home, as we assume that the restrictions to outbound tourism are generally symmetric with restrictions on inbound tourism, as suggested by anecdotal evidence observed for the Italian case. Our assumption seems validated, as we find that the introduction of these measures is negatively associated with a reduction in the number of arrivals, but their inclusion does not alter our results (column 2).

5. CONCLUDING REMARKS

In this paper we analysed inbound tourism to Italy during the COVID‐19 pandemic, looking at variation across Italian provinces of destination as well as across travellers' countries of origin. To this end, we relied on unique mobile phone data about the weekly number of foreign visitors in Italy, broken down by Italian province of stay and by visitors' nationality, for a period going from January 2019 to February 2021.

Our first result is that there is a negative and statistically significant relationship between the flow of foreign travellers in a given province and the local epidemiological situation, even after controlling for restrictive measures at the national and regional level. In other words, tourists appear to have paid a lot of attention to the risk of contagion not only at the national level (as somewhat expected), but also at the local destination level, and they make their travel plans accordingly. The resulting policy implication is that revamping international tourism flows during an epidemic is not simply a matter of lifting restrictions, but it also requires a substantial reduction of contagion risk, at least until the immunisation of the population reduces the health risks associated with getting ill with COVID‐19. With this regard, we can expect the negative elasticity of tourism flows to contagion to be sensibly reduced by progress in the vaccination campaigns.

Our second related result is that, since the start of the pandemic, provinces specialised in art tourism were hit the most, while provinces with a more prevalent orientation to business tourism proved to be significantly more resilient. Furthermore, provinces that used to be more ‘hotel intensive’ in terms of accommodation choices made by visitors were hit harder than provinces characterised by a larger use of private housing and/or rental houses. Finally, we also found that arrivals to local destinations more easily reachable by private means of transport (such as cars) decreased significantly less. This evidence is overall consistent with the hypothesis that contagion risk significantly affects not only tourists' decisions to travel but also how to travel and where to stay, thus implying heterogeneous effects across local destinations. Some local destinations appear to have suffered a larger fall in international arrivals, because they were perceived as ‘riskier’, given their local characteristics. Therefore, well‐diversified accommodation facilities and travel infrastructures enhance the resilience of a touristic destination to this type of adverse shocks.

Thirdly, we found that the different degrees in intensity and extension of entry restrictions across countries were key factors in explaining cross‐country patterns in international arrivals. However, screening requirements for incoming visitors (such as swab tests) do not seem to significantly discourage arrivals. Screening upon entry may thus be considered by policymakers an effective tool to reconcile the need to contain the expansion of the epidemic with the need to mitigate its impact on tourism flows. We also observed that arrivals from more remote European countries decreased comparatively more, even after controlling for entry restrictions and excluding neighbouring countries, pointing to the increased importance of distance in affecting tourists' choices during a pandemic.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors wish to thank Silvia Fabiani, Stefano Federico, Fadi Hassan, Alfonso Rosolia, Simonetta Zappa, Alessandro Borin, the editor and two anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions on a previous version of this paper, while retaining full responsibility for all remaining errors and omissions. The views expressed in this study are those of the authors and do not involve the responsibility of the Bank of Italy.

APPENDIX 1. 

In this section, we provide further details on the data we used.

Mobile phone data

The total number of foreign SIM cards in Italy was calculated by the mobile operator based on roaming data. The cell network coverage of our provider is very large, so the number of foreign SIM cards detected is also large. In practice, however, not all foreign SIM cards are captured by this network, because there are also other Italian mobile phone operators offering roaming services to foreign SIM cards. In order to overcome this issue and estimate the total population of foreign SIM cards in Italy, our provider added also an estimate of the number of SIM cards roaming on other competing Italian networks, based on proprietary commercial data and market shares calibration. While we do not have access to their methodology, we could verify that their final data are consistent with BISIT data for the period common to the two data sources, and the two time series show very similar dynamics (Figure  A1 ). This suggests that mobile phone data provides a good tracker for inbound tourism flows, supporting the use of this source for the analysis.

Number of inbound travellers (indices: August 2019 = 100).

A SIM card (Subscriber Identity Module) contains an integrated circuit that encodes the subscriber's identity and the nationality of the operating company that has issued the card. We take this information as a proxy for the residency of the card owner (i.e. country of departure). This approximation is good as far as phone users resort to resident mobile companies. This may not be the case for migrants, as mentioned in Section  3.1 , since they may prefer SIM cards issued in their home country instead of cards issued in their host country, to call their relatives at home at cheaper prices. For this reason, we excluded foreign SIM cards issued by countries associated with large immigrant communities in Italy.

As for the location, foreign SIM cards were attributed to Italian provinces based on the ‘cells’ (i.e. mobile phone antenna towers) they were connected with. If a SIM is detected in more than one province on the same day, it is assigned to the province where it was detected for a longer time. The Italian data protection legislation does not allow the diffusion of information derived from mobile phone data referring to less than 15 individual users. Therefore, if the three dimensions day , country of origin and province of destination are populated by 15 or less observations, the phone operator set the province of destination equal to ‘non specified’. The impact of this censoring on the data used in the paper is however quite low: the share of SIMs in the ‘undisclosed’ provinces was about 1.5 per cent in 2019 (2.5 in 2020). Moreover, those SIMs are prevalently associated with relatively ‘small’ countries, that were already excluded from the analysis for the reasons specified in the sub‐section List of countries included.

The Bank of Italy Survey on International Tourism (BISIT) is based on two pillars: (i) counting the number of travellers that enter/leave the country at a selected number of border crossing points, and (ii) conducting interviews with a sample of international travellers, both residents and not residents, crossing the Italian borders. The counting process aims at estimating the reference universe (i.e. the total number of inbound and outbound travellers), broken down by country of residence or destination, while the survey collects information about tourists' expenditure and their personal characteristics.

The BISIT survey asks the surveyed traveller to specify the reason for her trip to Italy choosing one among the possible answers: (A) personal reasons (it includes: A1 holidays and leisure; A2 Studying; A3 Pilgrimage or other religious reasons; A4 health or thermal tourism; A5 honeymoon; A6 visiting relatives and/or friends; A7 shopping; A8 other personal reasons). (B) Business reasons. (C) Transit only. If the respondent chooses A1, she is invited to further specify if it was holidays A1.1 at the beach; A1.2 on the mountains; A1.3 at the lake; A1.4 in a città d'arte (city of art); A1.5 green holidays; A1.6 sport and fitness holidays; A1.7 wine & food holidays. The complete questionnaire form can be downloaded from the Bank of Italy website section on international tourism statistics.

List of countries included

For readers' information, we list here (according to the alphabetical order of their ISO code) the 40 countries of origin included in our sample: Argentina, Austria, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, Brazil, Belarus, Canada, Switzerland, Chile, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Great Britain, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, Turkey and the United States. From this selection we excluded the Principality of Monaco (as it was not identifiable using mobile phone data) and the countries with large foreign resident communities, namely: Roumania, Bulgaria, Colombia, China, Serbia, Ukraine, Albania, India, Macedonia, and Moldova.

In guiding our choice, we adopted a simple quantitative criterion based on the ratio between the number of foreign residents living in Italy by country of origin (from the National Statistical Agency; ISTAT) and the number of travellers from the same country in 2019 (from the BISIT). We excluded the countries for which this ratio exceeds 10 per cent, because for such countries data may be distorted by the travels and the foreign SIMS owned by foreign residents living in Italy. Since the choice of the 10 per cent threshold is somewhat discretionary, we checked that lowering the threshold to 5 per cent leaves the results of the analysis substantially unchanged.

Table  A1 reports some statistics on their weight on total inbound tourism, both in terms of night spent and in terms of total travellers, and a comparison between BISIT data and mobile phone data.

Weight of included countries in terms of inbound tourism to Italy.

Source : BISIT and mobile phone data.

ROBUSTNESS ANALYSIS

Analysis by province: EU, Schengen members and UK.

Note : The table reports estimates of the model 1 over different periods. Column (1) and (2) look at the whole sample (January 2019–February 2021). The 1st wave period (column 3) includes the weeks from 25 February to 2 June 2020. The Summer period (column 4) goes from 3 June to 15 September 2020. The 2nd wave (columns 5–7) goes from 16 September 2020 onward. The reference categories for the variable interacted with a dummy for the COVID‐19 period are, respectively, ‘business‐reasons’ for the purpose of travel, and ‘rented house or private house’ for the accommodation. The reference category for ‘airplane’ (short for public means of transport) is private means of transport (like own car). Standard errors, in parenthesis, are clustered by province–time and country of departure–time. ***, ** and *Statistical significance at 1, 5, and 10 per cent, respectively. Fixed effects by country of departure – province – week ( α opw ) and country of departure – time ( α ot ) are always included.

Analysis by province: Exclusion of countries with a border in common with Italy.

Note : The table reports estimates of the model 1 over different periods but excluding countries of origin that share a common border with Italy, namely Austria, France, Switzerland and Slovenia. Columns (1) and (2) look at the whole sample (January 2019–February 2021). The 1st wave period (column 3) includes the weeks from 25 February to 2 June 2020. The Summer period (column 4) goes from 3 June to 15 September 2020. The 2nd wave (columns 5–7) goes from 16 September 2020 onward. Standard errors, in parenthesis, are clustered by province–time and country of departure–time. The reference categories for the variable interacted with a dummy for the COVID‐19 period are, respectively, ‘business‐reasons’ for the purpose of travel, and ‘rented house or private house’ for the accommodation. The reference category for ‘airplane’ (short for public means of transport) is private means of transport (like own car). ***, ** and *Statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 per cent, respectively. Fixed effects by country of departure – province – week ( α opw ) and country of departure – time ( α ot ) are always included.

Analysis by countries of origin: Exclusion of countries with a border in common with Italy.

Note : The table reports estimates of the model 2 over different periods but excluding countries of origin that share a common border with Italy, namely Austria, France, Switzerland and Slovenia. Columns (1) and (2) look at the whole sample (January 2019–February 2021). The 1st wave period (column 3) includes the weeks from 25 February to 2 June 2020. The Summer period (column 4) goes from 3 June to 15 September 2020. The 2nd wave (columns 5–7) goes from 16 September 2020 onward. Variable cases ot − 1 was winsorised at the 1%–99% per cent level to mitigate possible measurement errors (there are cases in the original database where the number of new cases is negative). The model includes the variables X op (coefficients not shown), namely d COVID 19 * β 1 ′ Purpose op + β 2 ′ Accommodation op + β 3 ′ Transport op . Standard errors, in parenthesis, are clustered by province–time and country of departure–time. ***, ** and *Statistical significance at 1, 5, and 10 per cent, respectively. Fixed effects by country of departure – province – week ( α opw ) and province – time ( α pt ) are always included.

VARIANCE DECOMPOSITION

As discussed in Section  3.2 , our empirical approach relies on fixed effects to achieve a clean identification of the variation explained by our set of independent variables. In this respect, this section shows a comparison exercise on the amount of variance that our models can explain, with a view of assessing the relative importance of variables by country of origin and by province. We do this exercise by incrementally adding variables and fixed effects to a model and looking at the square of the correlation between our dependent variable and its fitted values. This is conceptually equivalent to looking at the R2 in the case of a linear model. Results are reported in Table  A5 .

A variance decomposition.

Note : The table shows the variance explained by several models with different sets of fixed effects and variables. The explained variance is the square of the correlation between fitted values and observed values. The residual variance is computed as the share of variance in addition to model (1), taken as a reference term. X pt and d COVID 19 # X op are the variables included in Equation ( 1 ); X ot are the variables added in Equation ( 2 ).

As a first comparison term, we compute this statistic for a model in which we only include the fixed effects α opw (column 1). These fixed effects, as discussed in Section  3.2 , control for all factors that render a province more attractive for tourists from a specific country, as well as for possible seasonal patterns in these relationships. This simple model alone can explain about 84% of the total variation of the data, leaving 16% residual variance, exhaustively capturing the gravity structure in our tourism data. We then add to the model the time fixed effects α t (column 2). They capture the effect of time‐varying shocks that affect all Italian destinations and flows from all countries of origin in the same way. As expected, this model explains a large share of the residual variance (about 70%), clearly reflecting the nature of COVID‐19 as a common shock that hit international tourism flows. The residual 30% is the variation during the pandemic that was country or destination specific and which is the focus of this paper. In column (3) we thus report the same statistic as we add to the model all our explanatory variables. Overall, augmenting the model with our variables lead to a significant improvement in terms of explained variance (by about 12%).

We then look at the explanatory power of our variables along a specific dimension (province versus country of origin), controlling for the other with fixed effects. In particular, we first include country‐of‐origin fixed effects, leaving the province‐time variation explained by our variables (column 4). This model explains 94% of residual variance. Adding province–time fixed effects to the model in column (3) leads to a similar accounting, as it raises the explained variance to 92% (column 5). To sum up, this evidence suggests that province characteristics and country factors played a comparable role in explaining heterogeneous patterns at the country–province level during the pandemic.

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1 The views expressed in this study are those of the authors and do not involve the responsibility of the Bank of Italy. While retaining full responsibility for all remaining errors and omissions, the authors wish to thank Silvia Fabiani, Stefano Federico, Fadi Hassan, Alfonso Rosolia, Simonetta Zappa, Alessandro Borin, the editor and two anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions on a previous version of this paper.

2 The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) estimated that in 2017 5.5 per cent of Italian GDP was generated by domestic and international tourism. Taking into account the indirect and the induced impacts in relation to consumption by workers in the sector, the share would rise to 13.2 per cent of GDP. On the basis of the Tourism Satellite Account published by Istat, the Italian national statistical agency, over a third of these effects were attributable to international tourism alone.

3 See Borin et al. ( 2020 ).

4 Di Mauro ( 2020 ) offers a comprehensive overview of the many economic issues raised by the global pandemic.

5 For a historical survey on the use of mobile phone data for tourism analysis and an interesting country‐case application, see Ahas et al. ( 2008 ).

6 The information derives from the Bank of Italy Survey on International Tourism (BISIT, henceforth), which was established in the mid‐'90s to gather data for the compilation of the ‘travel’ item in the current account of the Italian balance of payments. More details on this survey are provided in Section Data annex of Appendix  1 .

7 Thanks to the granularity of BISIT data, we could distinguish not only business from leisure tourism, but also holidays aiming at ‘open air’ purposes, such as sojourning by the sea or at the mountains, from more ‘indoor’ purposes, like visiting cities of art and historical landmarks. Further details on the questionnaire are reported in Appendix  1 (Section Data annex).

8 Section Data annex of Appendix  1 provides further details on this data source. In particular, limited to the time interval for which the two data sources overlap, we could verify that the dynamics of foreign visitors in Italy as conveyed by mobile phone data tracks very well the dynamics of foreign arrivals as conveyed by BISIT data (see Figure  A1 in Appendix  1 ). In the same section of the Appendix we also report the list of countries included in the sample, and we explain the criterion adopted for their selection. We also provide additional statistics related to their weight in terms of total inbound tourism to Italy.

9 Dipartimento di Protezione Civile is the national body in Italy that deals with the prediction, prevention and management of emergency events. Data on COVID‐19 can be retrieved at https://github.com/pcm‐dpc/COVID‐19 .

10 We thank Paolo Conteduca for kindly sharing the data with us.

11 Morley et al. ( 2014 ) show that a gravity equation for tourism can be derived from individual utility theory, after modelling the destination choice problem faced by the tourist. Usage of gravity models for empirical applications in tourism literature is standard; see for instance Cevik ( 2020 ).

12 Notice that subscript w refers to the ordering of the week in a generic year in our sample, while the t subscript indicates a specific week in a specific year and thus uniquely identifies our observational unit (a pair country‐province).

13 Since we only have data on inbound tourism to Italy, we cannot identify the response of international tourism to developments in Italy separately from developments in Italy's competitors. Doing so would require a cross‐country comparison, that is tourism flows towards Italy and other foreign destinations.

14 In practice, we rely on the Stata routine developed by Correia et al. ( 2019 ).

15 We also consider separately two indicators related to internal mobility restrictions in the country of departure, which we derived from some categorical variables that constitute the Stringency index. These are: d stayathome , which is equal to one if citizens are given a general stay‐at‐home order and can move only for work‐related reasons and/or other essential activities (e.g. grocery shopping), and d noreg . movement which is equal to one if mobility across regions in the country of departure is restricted. We include these variables under the hypothesis that tourists may be more likely to choose to travel abroad (i.e. to Italy) if they face more stringent limitations at home, all things equal.

16 The population‐weighted distance measures the geographical distance between the largest cities of Italy and the country o , where inter‐city distances are weighted by the city's population share over the country's population. See Mayer and Zignago ( 2011 ) for further methodological details.

17 We run a number of robustness checks on our contagion variable, described later.

18 For instance, Wikipedia had included a clickable map of Italy displaying the number of cases by province since the end of July 2020 at the entry ‘COVID‐19 pandemic in Italy’.

19 A similar result is obtained also if we include only northern regions in the regression for the first wave sample (results available upon request).

20 We lag this variable to ensure that the level of regional restrictions was in the information set of the tourist before departure. However, the coefficient on our contagion remains unchanged if we use its value at time t .

21 As a further robustness check, we limited our sample to the weeks before the introduction of the zone‐system, obtaining an even larger negative coefficient (results available upon request).

22 Robustness checks with different lags produce similar results, also given the inertia in the spread of the contagion.

23 In an additional robustness check, we consider the possibility that tourists are also interested in the acceleration of contagion rather than only in the speed of contagion, which we measure as the difference between the notification rate of new positive cases in a week and the previous week. The coefficient on this additional variable is however not statistically significant (results not reported but available upon request).

24 A PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) molecular test for COVID‐19 is a test used to diagnosis people who are currently infected with SARS‐CoV‐2 and it is considered the most reliable test for diagnosing COVID‐19.

25 Indeed, notice that for this set of countries we can include only the ‘swab test’ dummy among the dummies measuring bilateral travel restrictions, as there is no cross‐country variation that allows identification of the other coefficients (given that the other restrictions were equal across these countries).

26 As an alternative approach, we considered the difference in the number of cases between Italy and the country of departure, distinguishing between positive and negative values. Results remain mixed. It must be noticed that the interpretation of this coefficient requires caution, in consideration of the wide differences in testing ability across countries (that may in turn affect the comparability of this variable across countries, if this testing ability or criteria change over time in a given country) and of the fact that our specification of fixed effects is already absorbing the strong commonality across countries over time in the spread of the contagion.

27 A note of caution on the interpretation of this coefficient is in order. Due to our fixed effects specification (which includes time‐province fixed effects), a positive sign on this coefficients is telling us that countries that had relatively stronger restrictions at a specific point in time were also countries associated with relatively higher outbound tourism to Italy. This is not the same as claiming that stronger restrictions over time (as measured by higher values of the stringency index) led to more outbound tourism. By omitting time‐province fixed effects the coefficient of the stringency index turns negative, as one would expect ex ante. However, time‐fixed effects are needed in our view to control for many unobserved factors at play (for instance developments in competing touristic markets).

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Post-pandemic tourism resilience: changes in Italians’ travel behavior and the possible responses of tourist cities

Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes

ISSN : 1755-4217

Article publication date: 31 May 2021

Issue publication date: 21 July 2021

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, the travel sector has faced an intense challenge, making tourism one of the most affected sectors at the time of writing. Based on the results of a survey administered to a sample of 700 Italian tourists, this paper aims to acquire an empirical understanding of key challenges for the travel and tourism sector in the coming months and the possible responses of tourist cities.

Design/methodology/approach

To study tourism after the pandemic, OUT (University of Naples Tourism Research Center) has created an online survey to answer the following questions: What will tourism be like after the pandemic? What will the main changes in travel behaviors be? What role will new information technologies play in future tourism? Are there territorial differences based on the spread of the virus?

The pandemic has inevitably affected everyone’s tourist choices, regardless of how much their specific area of residence has been impacted by the virus. Consequently, it will significantly influence travelers’ experiences. The Italian tourists who were survey respondents are aware that physical distancing rules will probably remain in effect for an extended time and, therefore, they cannot imagine future tourism not conditioned by these measures. This does not mean that Italians will give up tourism in the short-medium term, however. Indeed, the research data highlight the resilient character of tourism in that it is transformed but does not cease to exist.

Originality/value

By studying the future through a sociological approach, it is possible to identify how the COVID-19 emergency will impact tourism and how both the form and social meaning of mobility will be conditioned. On the basis of the data, the analysis will be directed from the present to the post-pandemic horizon, hypothesizing possible scenarios for the future of tourism and providing some possible policy indications.

• Tourist behavior
• Post-pandemic tourism
• Sociology of the future

Corbisiero, F. and Monaco, S. (2021), "Post-pandemic tourism resilience: changes in Italians’ travel behavior and the possible responses of tourist cities", Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes , Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 401-417. https://doi.org/10.1108/WHATT-01-2021-0011

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Fabio Corbisiero and Salvatore Monaco.

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

What will travel look like post-coronavirus and how can we try to support an industry that has been on its knees since the pandemic began in early 2020? The answers to these questions are still uncertain and the lessons we are learning from this painful historical moment are different. Nothing can be taken for granted and multiplying opportunities, travel arrangements and technological solutions is not enough to guarantee solid growth prospects for tourism. Tourism, despite the support of new technologies (apps, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, big data…), constitutes a complex and therefore fragile system, as it depends on multiple factors such as human well-being and the environment, mutual trust, international solidarity, security, peace and health.

COVID-19 has significantly impacted two of the main elements that distinguish tourism, namely, physical travel and social interactions. As a result, many restrictions and extraordinary precautionary measures have been implemented internationally to stem and combat the coronavirus pandemic. These initiatives have completely overturned the daily life of people on a global level, including by exerting a powerful impact on their tourist behavior ( Corbisiero, 2020 ; IPSOS, 2020 ; Irwin, 2020 ). Thus, the coronavirus pandemic temporarily halted the growth of tourism, a sector that was experiencing a real boom in recent years ( UNWTO, 2019 ; Cerved, 2019 ; RTE, 2020 ; WTTC, 2020a ).

Within urban contexts, the COVID-19 affected all parts of the hospitality value chain. The impact of the pandemic cancelled daily events such as catering or relax services, closed accommodations and shut down attractions became immediately felt within the tourist chain. Bars, pubs and restaurants had to close as well, though in several countries, a switch to take-away/delivery sales allowed some areas to continue to turn the economy ( Gössling et al. , 2020 ).

Widely, cities are impacted even in situations where they have escaped the worst of the health crisis itself.

Since the advent of the coronavirus, the transportation system and, more generally, social mobility as well have suffered a setback not only because of travel bans and widespread restrictions on physical gatherings, but also because they immediately suffered from negative perceptions owing to the fear of contagion. With mobility at a standstill – cruising ships and aircraft parked – collapsing consumer demand, low cash reserves, hotels shuttered, it took only a few weeks for the pandemic to completely disrupt the geography of travel and tourism ( Florida, 2020 ). As reported by Haywood (2020) , “Destinations reliant on tourism became ghost towns. Cries of ‘What’s going on?’ led to feelings of sheer hopelessness among many, dramatized by ‘Inner City Blues’ (Marvin Gaye songs on YouTube)” (p. 599).

It should be specified that tourism demand has slowly begun to rise again in several European countries in the second half of 2020 ( UNWTO, 2020b ). A pretty safe and responsible travel is currently possible through European countries, and it is imperative that governments work closely to get tourism moving again.

A trend that makes the resilience of the tourism processes evident, also in regard to other ongoing crises that are not as immediate, but equally meaningful as COVID-19, such as ecological footprints or landscapes conservation related to leisure tourism. The link between resilience and tourism destinations is a significant issue because disturbances are not exclusively connected to pandemics, but several further shocks have been on the debating table for a long time. Climate changes, terrorist attacks, financial and industrial crisis and digital divide have to be seriously considered as “tourist shocks” owing to their effects on tourist communities to survive ( Araña and León, 2008 ; Lee and Chen, 2011 ). As a deceptive “magic recipe” to build a discourse about post-pandemic tourism, resilience introduces controversial aspects that are often related to sustainability or patched up by coupling the term “tourism” with the adjectives “green,” “sustainable” or “slow.” In our paper, we will focus on the fact that tourism would be able to bind to the notion of sustainability, at least in its definition of ability to preserve something in existence without interruption or diminution ( Assadourian, 2013 ). The comprehension of the dynamics of economic and social crises suggests new thinking on the re-design of tourism and of its connected social needs. Particularly, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 emergency travel-as-usual will no longer be sustainable, with impacts on both the environment and local communities, and sometimes even without significant economic benefits ( Tembo, 2020 ). For a general destination to be resilient, to resist and to adapt to external disruptions, one basic condition is to respond to, cope with and adapt to changes over time without losing its fundamental structure and function ( Adger et al. , 2002 ). For sure the resilience depends also on the characteristics of the disaster, the level of exposure of the system and its sensitivity as well as the adaptation that results from the territorial response ( Becker and Rubinstein, 2004 ; Cochrane, 2008 ). In this sense, in considering the relationship between resilience and tourism, the role of the tourists’ communities, the type of shock and the ability to adapt and persist in its business activities must also be analyzed ( Ivkov et al. , 2019 ). After each crisis, there is an increase in fear, tension and confusion as tourist behavior is sensitive to crises ( Bodosca et al. , 2014 ).

The purpose of this paper is to obtain an empirical understanding of the key challenges for the travel and tourism sector in the coming months. Predictive analysts ( Barlow et al. , 2016 ; Corbisiero et al. , 2020 ; Lade et al. , 2020 ) have long underlined the role of “anthropogenic disasters” in the future of tourism, disasters characterized by human interference in the natural environment. Therefore, to identify what impact the pandemic is having and will have on the future of tourism, OUT (University of Naples Tourism Research Center) has conducted an online survey specifically aimed at detecting the behavior, intentions and future propensities of Italian travelers. Because of the highly interlinked cultural, political and socio-economic impacts of COVID-19, historical trends of tourism are expected to be modified. The predictive power of traditional explanatory models about tourist dynamics ( Röcker, 2010 ) might not be appropriate anymore because of the new pandemic. So the future models need to focus on taking more novel approaches for exploring the essential factors there are behind the acceptance to return travelling safely.

More specifically, the empirical study was conducted to understand the sensitivity of Italian tourists faced with a health crisis such as that of COVID-19, with the aim of obtaining information from the travelers’ community to identify any potential changes in their travel behaviors as a consequence of COVID-19. The evolution of these behaviors has also been studied from a temporal perspective. Our main hypothesis is that through a comparison between pre-pandemic behaviors and predictable future behaviors the disruption owing to the present crisis can be converted into transformative innovation and help reshape and rethink the tourism, establishing a new way to travel in terms of a system which is commercially viable and offers the community of tourists equitable and sustainable access to tourism resources and distribution of the benefits, while minimizing negative environmental and other impacts.

The Italian case is an interesting focus for sociological study about tourism because Italy’s hospitality industry was the first in Europe to be hit by the devastating impact of the virus and to transition through the various phases of COVID-19 containment measures, including the shock of lockdown ( Monaco, 2020 ). In Italy, the spread of the virus has varied greatly among geographical areas ( Corbisiero and La Rocca, 2020 ). Although the virus ended up reaching all the regions of the peninsula, the country’s north has been the most affected area since the beginning of the pandemic. Lombardy (where the first major hotbed of the epidemic in Italy was discovered) has been the most heavily struck region, with tens of thousands of infected individuals and thousands of deaths. The other neighboring Italian regions most powerfully impacted have been Veneto and Emilia-Romagna. On the basis of these considerations, the study also seeks to understand if there are differences among Italians’ visions of and intentions for the future of tourism based on their area of residence.

By studying the tourism through a territorial approach, it is possible to identify how the COVID-19 emergency will impact tourism and how mobility and the tourist accommodation will be conditioned both in their form and social meaning. In our perspective, the space over which a COVID-19 impact analysis needs to be defined goes beyond geographical boundaries and includes multiple dimensions of the physical and virtual realities within which the “tourism gaze” ( Urry and Larsen, 2011 ) plays out. Some cities in Italy are facing the complex challenge of the reorganization of cultural offer, mobility and accommodation, where the gradual reopening involved the resumption of some tourist activities and the consequent increase in related mobility flows.

Methodology

Research instrument.

As part of this study, a questionnaire was designed to collect data from a sample of Italian travelers, holders of a long-term residence in Italy. The questionnaire was divided into five sections.

The first section was designed to collect the socio-demographic data of tourists, including residence area, gender, age, nationality, income, education level and occupation.

The second section of the questionnaire comprises a series of questions aimed at learning about Italians’ tourist habits before the health emergency. More specifically, respondents were asked to indicate their preferred means of transport, trip duration, the type of accommodation they mainly chose and their favorite travel companions.

The same questions were asked again in the third section of the questionnaire, this time from a forecasting point of view. In other words, travelers were asked to indicate their tourist preferences for these same aspects but imagining their next trips in the post-COVID period.

The fourth section of the questionnaire was implemented to understand the main consequences for the tourism sector in the short-medium term. To obtain this information, a set of questions on travelers’ needs, fears and expectations was proposed.

In the last section of the questionnaire, a specific space was dedicated to the use of new technologies, both in everyday practice and as tools for increasing possibilities in tourism, including through virtual travel.

Population and sample method

The research was carried out on a sample of Italian residents. For the survey, a subpopulation made up of individuals aged between 15 and 75 years old was chosen, as it was important that the sample include only people who will actually be capable of engaging in tourism autonomously in the near future. Not having a list of subjects to be involved in the research, the sampling method used was non-probabilistic. To ensure the geographical representativeness of the data, the working group chose to set up sampling by quotas, dividing the sample into small groups proportional to the distribution of the Italian population among the three main available tourist areas in Italy: north, center and south.

The questionnaire was computerized via QUALTRICS and disseminated online through the main communication channels of OUT (social networks, websites and mailing lists). Thus, the data was collected online between March and August 2020.

We are aware that the results of random sampling research are not representative in that the insights and observations they produce cannot be extended in all respects to the entire population group ( Lombi, 2015 ; Monaco, 2019 ). However, we believe that the now widespread use of the internet among the Italian population allowed this study to reach heterogeneous targets which, as such, are also able to provide a highly reliable general picture of social phenomena ( Mahrt and Scharkow, 2013 ). In addition, the statistical significance of the collected data on changes from pre-COVID to post-COVID has been realized using the chi-square test.

The group of 700 subjects included in the sample has an average age of 38 years and is made up of 60% women and 40% men. Respondents are mainly office workers (38.3%) and students (29.9%), with 10.1% of the survey respondents unemployed and/or seeking employment.

The educational status of the Italian tourists involved is quite high, with over 63.5% of them holding a post-secondary degree. The male participants have a higher education level than the female survey respondents: 40% of the Italian men involved in this study have an undergraduate post-secondary degree, and 27.6% a postgraduate degree. By comparison, 37% of the female travelers involved have an undergraduate post-secondary degree and 27% a postgraduate degree.

Almost all of the sample (93%) declared that their tourist habits will change following the most acute phase of the health emergency in relation to: the duration of tourist experiences, travel companions, type of accommodation, means of transport chosen and use of technologies. Delving deeper into the data, it is immediately clear that this anticipated change is a widespread trend at the national level, but the propensity for such change is expressed more emphatically by respondents residing in the regions of northern Italy that have been most affected by the pandemic: 95% of people living in the north of Italy said that will change their tourist habits, versus 92% of central residents and 89% of people living in the south. One initial empirical finding of interest is that the pandemic has inevitably affected everyone, regardless of their area of residence.

What respondents said in general was confirmed by a comparison with their answers to the questions in Sections 2 and 3 of the questionnaire, through which it is possible to compare pre- and post-COVID-19 tourist habits and preferences.

As can be seen from Table 1 , the Italian survey respondents who declared that they do not intend to give up tourism in the future plan to engage in shorter experiences than before: generally speaking, trips lasting longer than a week lose their appeal in favor of micro-vacations.

More specifically, a geographical breakdown of the responses shows a certain caution on the part of residents of southern Italy. As compared to the pre-COVID period, they are more inclined to concentrate their tourist experiences in the space of a few days or no more than five days. Survey respondents who reside in central Italy are likewise willing to give up a few days of vacation, but the number of people who decide to stay away from home for at least a week is higher. As for northern Italians, many them continue to prefer holidays of at least seven days, but the percentage of people who spend two weeks away from home is clearly decreasing.

Another interesting change in the intentions of Italian travelers has to do with travel companions. In Table 2 we can see that Italian tourists intend to take fewer trips with friends or organized groups and to engage in more tourist experiences with partners and family, most likely because these latter are people with whom they already share a certain degree of intimacy in everyday life and who they trust more. This attitude is also explained by the fact that the Italian government’s regulations during the lockdown period permitted people to visit family members first and foremost, and non-relatives only in a later phase.

In other words, the research highlights that respondents are adopting a prudent approach to the choice of travel companions, a trend that is widespread nationally and most evident among northern respondents. In terms of travel companions, in general it could be argued that the Italians who took part to the survey prefer to engage in tourism with people whose behaviors, health status and daily encounters they know well (or believe they know well).

With respect to this specific aspect, the greatest degree of caution is displayed by over-40s: a higher percentage of them declared that they prefer planning their holidays with family as compared to members of the younger generations. In contrast, young people from southern Italy in particular still consider the experience of travel as a moment of sharing with their group of friends. Moreover, we can see that the trend of taking solitary trips remains quite unchanged in the center and south of Italy. This type of travel is also practiced almost exclusively by the youngest male respondents in the sample.

As regards choice of accommodations ( Table 3 ), from a forecasting point of view and in light of physical distancing measures, in general the subjects show greater interest now than in the pre-COVID period in holiday homes (where they can personally oversee the cleaning of rooms and spaces) and hotels rated four stars and up. Luxury hotels are acquiring growing interest in the eyes of Italians as they are equipped with rooms or suites featuring large spaces.

Moreover, it is important to underline that sharing economy practices, which were experiencing an interesting period of growth in recent years ( Cheng, 2016 ; Hamari et al. , 2016 ; Ertz et al. , 2019 ), are undergoing a setback. Interpreting the data from a territorial perspective as well, we can also argue that, before COVID, it was mainly respondents residing in central Italy who chose to stay in shared apartments. The advent of the pandemic seems to some extent to be discouraging this practice, as well as that of staying in camp grounds or hostels (no respondents from central Italy stated that they would consider a hostel as a possible accommodation in the short-long term).

As we anticipated, Italian tourists who have more extensive economic resources expressed a greater preference for expensive accommodation facilities than other respondents. This group includes mainly older people residing in northern Italy. They prefer to spend their time in luxury hotels because these facilities have the spending capacity to offer their guests the best guarantees regarding the cleanliness of the spaces as well as customer check-in and check-out procedures.

A final aspect we investigated to monitor the tourism changes of Italians from the pre-COVID to the post-pandemic period is the choice of means of transport for traveling. It is often argued that a country with a good transportation system can be considered to be a tourist destination ( Das et al. , 2007 ; Pagliara et al. , 2017 ). Thus, according to Kaul (1985) , the transportation network is one of the most fundamental components of successful tourism development. Nevertheless, in line with recent data that testify to the crisis that the transport system has been undergoing for several months now ( Unimpresa, 2020 ), the data in Table 4 clearly show that a significant percentage of Italians avoid traveling by plane, train or bus. The fact that it is not always easy to comply with rules regarding appropriate interpersonal distances and the exorbitant prices of airline and high-speed train tickets have driven many Italians to prefer car travel to reach tourist destinations. In the south in particular, more so than other areas of Italy, the data show substantial interest on the part of respondents in the possibility of renting a car for excursions. One of the positive aspects of traveling by car is undoubtedly avoiding the risk of coming into contact with unknown individuals. Moreover, even if this means of transport makes the journey longer and more tiring, it also allows people to make stops along the way, offering them the chance to discover places that they otherwise would only have been passing through.

The subjectivity of distance and proximity plays an important role in the spatial distribution of tourists, destinations and tourist activities ( Larsen, 2015 ). The distance to and proximity of destinations influence which places tourists view as attractive and which are perceived as unattractive to visit. This is particularly informative in the context of the pandemic.

The most recent international data on tourism mobility ( UNWTO, 2020a ) describe a scenario in which tourists choose destinations that are closer to their usual places of residence, not only because several international destinations remain inaccessible but also because nearby destinations are considered less risky and they allow people to return home quickly in case of need or emergency.

To support our results we used a series of chi-square tests. As the p -value is less than our chosen significance level (α = 0.05) for all the analyzed dimensions, we can reject the null hypothesis and reveal statistically significant difference between the analyzed aspects from pre-COVID 19 and post-COVID 19 in the behavior of Italian tourists ( Tables 5–8 ).

Such significance points to a clear shift in the future of tourism, not only for Italy but also in other countries.

To better understand the changes in travel behaviors, in the following sections of the questionnaire we focused on the most significant tourists’ attitudes and fears and their future use of technology in relation to tourism. In total 82.62% of subjects stated that they prefer tourist destinations with large open spaces while 66.7% declared that they avoid the destinations more heavily affected by the coronavirus. In this sense, according to the group of respondents, mountain areas, but also countryside and natural parks, have a significantly competitive advantage. Looking to the future once again, 60% of respondents said they will avoid urban tourism and tourist cities, reflecting their awareness that the virus has spread more widely in urban contexts ( Bachimon et al. , 2020 ).

Many cities have lost a part of their appeal in the eyes of Italians, especially in the central-northern part of the country. This change was already visible during the summer of 2020, when Venice, Milan, Genoa and Rome itself (to name just only the best-known examples of central-northern Italian tourist cities) welcomed fewer visitors than they had in previous years, which made them appear as strangely empty and silent as several other cities around the world ( Ioannides and Gyimóthy, 2020 ). The same fate has not affected southern Italian tourist cities such as Naples or Palermo, which have hosted mainly internal tourism. Although the emergency has diminished, the image of hotbed is still associated with urban contexts in the collective imagination, owing in part to mass media communication that has long emphasized the role of cities in the spread of the virus ( Antonelli, 2020 ; Cowper, 2020 ; Yu et al. , 2020 ). This concern mainly has an emotional impact on people living in areas that have been less directly affected by the pandemic. It is no coincidence that respondents residing in Lombardy, Veneto, but also Trentino Alto-Adige and Emilia Romagna (areas that experienced moments of great difficulty, especially in the initial phase) expressed themselves less in agreement with this statement. From a sociological point of view, this data reveal an emerging prejudice amongst Italians toward the areas in which a greater number of cases have been recorded based on the fear, albeit unfounded, that the risk of contagion remains high even after the emergency has passed.

In addition, 69% of the sample said that they dread meeting people from other cities for fear of contagion. This data allows us to argue that, in the current historical and social context torn apart by the COVID-19 pandemic, one social consequence is that foreigners are kept at a distance by locals in pursuit of an idea of safety and the hope of preserving their health. This phenomenon contradicts one of the cornerstones of post-modern tourism: the encounter with the other, mutual contamination, coming to know cultures other than one’s own through dialogue and exchange with the people who live in other contexts ( Murji and Picker, 2020 ; Noor et al. , 2020 ; Page and Connell, 2020 ).

As for the role of new technologies in the future of tourism, new technological applications such as the Internet, mobile-based interfaces or augmented-reality systems constitute significant pillars in tourists’ choices. In the pandemic era, the link between tourism and technologies would seem stronger than ever owing to the acceleration of mobility that the latest generation of technological services seems to offer. Examples are digital identification technology, used not only to expedite reception services but also to make transits quicker, and virtual tours of museums.

According to our data, 47% of respondents stated that they had engaged in forms of virtual tourism during the three months prior to the survey. The highest percentage of virtual travelers is concentrated in northern Italy (58.3%) and is mainly made up of young people belonging to the Millennial generation and Gen Z. Although virtual tourism through online photos or videos, Google Maps, Google Street View, 3D reproductions and videogames seems to have become quite widespread in Italy, only 6.7% of respondents said that they agree with the idea that virtual tourism can supplant physical travel.

Conversely, as people are living increasingly digital and connected lives, it seems that enjoying physical experiences while traveling is the only (or at least the primary) way to unwind. However, the participating sample agrees in attributing substantial weight to technologies in the post-COVID period. More than in the past, they are considered as useful devices for leading a life in greater safety and with more opportunities. Their usefulness is recognized above all in booking and making online purchases (76%), searching for tourist information, and receiving constant updates on the evolution of the epidemic (81.4%). An interesting finding is the idea, more common among the youngest respondents of the sample, that robotics and artificial intelligence could be useful tools for limiting the possibility of contagion among people (15%).

The COVID-19 emergency represents a watershed between what tourism was like a few months ago and what it will be like in the coming years. The survey highlights that the behavior of Italian tourists is and will be influenced for quite some time by a series of factors including personal economic well-being, changes in costs, perceived health risks and consumption capacities that have changed as a result of pandemic restrictions. The Italian tourists in our sample are aware that physical distancing rules will probably remain in effect for a few years and, therefore, they cannot imagine future tourism not conditioned by such measures. This does not mean that Italians will give up tourism in the short-medium term. Indeed, the research data highlight the resilience of tourism, a field that is transformed but does not cease to exist ( Jeuring and Diaz-Soria, 2017 ). Our research found that respondents indicate a general preference for more nearby vacations, historically associated with lower sociodemographic status and older age brackets ( Berrino, 2011 ).

It is not the first time in the history of tourism that mobility has been challenged by epidemics.

In the new century, an anxiety of travel conditioned by fear of contagion arose as early as 2002, the year in which alarm began to spread about SARS, that was an atypical form of pneumonia that first appeared in Guangdong province (Canton) in China. In 2009, there was also the so-called “Swine Flu,” caused by an A H1N1 virus, which triggered enormous concern globally. The Middle East respiratory syndrome appeared in 2015 ( Gostin and Lucey, 2015 ).

As we have seen, although the magnitude of these catastrophic events could have generated a permanent blockage of tourist flows, none of them ultimately caused a significant long-term decline in global tourism development. In all of these circumstances, tourism displayed its resilient character, proving itself a sector capable of resisting critical circumstances. It has certainly undergone variations and modifications each time, from the destinations people choose to the way they practice tourism ( Jeuring and Haartsen, 2017 ), but it has always survived, establishing itself as one of the most successful sectors.

The results of this study suggest that the same process will occur in the post-COVID phase as well. The losses caused by this pandemic have not put an end to the desire to escape and travel, so Italian travelers will continue to engage in tourism, albeit differently than in the past in terms of places to visit, time spent, accommodation facilities, travel companions, the use of technology and so on.

These considerations are also based on the data we collected regarding the use of new technologies. Tourists have stated that they find technologies extremely useful to support their tourism choices and during their travel experiences, but at the same time they have stressed that virtual travel alone is not enough to satisfy their desire for mobility. Although there have been many advances in technology, our sample does not consider virtual reality and augmented reality as valid alternatives to real travel.

As de Kerckhove suggests ( Marino, 2020 ), we can distinguish “tourism of the mind” from “tourism of the body.” The first category includes imaginative and virtual travel ( Urry and Sheller, 2006 ). These experiences are a useful tool for gaining knowledge about the world or for visiting otherwise-inaccessible places ( Monaco, 2018 ). During the first national lockdown, for example, people practiced mind tourism on a massive scale because they could not do otherwise. However, the research data show that it is “tourism of the body,” enacted through physical mobility, that constitutes the element which will prove capable of overcoming the obstacles to tourism. Italian travelers seek these experiences out to have a direct relationship with places and objects. In other words, the pandemic has increased and accelerated the use of new technologies also to practice alternative forms of tourism. In this sense, new technologies have made it possible to overcome the obstacles linked first to quarantine and then to physical distancing measures. However, this seems to have not been enough for Italian travelers. In fact, as soon as they had the opportunity to travel again, they abandoned the means of communication to experience a non-mediated contact with the world. In this scenario we can see how once again tourism has already begun to show its resilient feature, thanks also to the ability of its protagonists to invent and reinvent it, in a form that inherits something from the past, but at the same time adds new elements.

Looking at the future, in this scenario, local communities should be considered as important partners for the restart of tourism in each territory. They must be particularly involved in designing authentic and engaging types of experiences for travelers interested in discovering local beauties. An innovative solution could be to create networks amongst the public sector, private tourist companies and local communities, so as to work synergistically for the territorial revaluation and development of a new form of tourism, in line with the new needs expressed by the tourist demand.

The behavior of local communities, which can encourage a different form of tourism, and the new choices of tourists, adapted to the new social, historical and health contingencies, may seem ambiguous. But it is precisely in this ambiguity that we can clearly see that traveling is a social need: even if on the one hand it frightens people, on the other hand it is perceived as a necessity.

According to recent studies on this issue ( OCSE, 2020 ; Lapointe, 2020 ; Vishal and Aakriti, 2020 ), the will to travel expressed by the Italian people included in the survey, despite the difficulties characterizing the current moment, is probably based on four short-term expectations: the vaccine efficacy, the reduction of travel restrictions, the metabolization of health measures for travelers and passengers and, above all, the spread of local tourism. In particular, the tourists involved in this study currently appear to be oriented more than ever toward forms of proximity travels within confined areas not far from home during which they avoid crowds as much as possible. From this analytical point of view, it is safe to argue that journeys will increasingly focus on “why” to visit rather than “what” as in the past, to meet travelers’ specific needs to go beyond sterile or already-familiar experiences. Recent research on the subject shows how these considerations do not only apply to Italian tourists, but can also be extended to other travelers around the world. For example, in the post-COVID, the demand for domestic tourism in the United Kingdom has registered an unprecedented rise ( Dinev, 2020 ). There too, as in Italy, travelers have not abandoned the desire to travel, but have oriented their choices toward closer destinations. As recently stated by the World Travel and Tourism Council ( WTTC, 2020b ), a similar situation also marks other territories, including European countries such as Spain, Greece, France and Portugal among others. There traveler preferences and behaviors have shifted toward domestic and regional vacations and the outdoors will reign in the short-term, with a specific attention to health, safety and social, and environmental, sustainability.

Conclusions and implications

The health, social and economic emergency produced by COVID-19 is offering tourist operators the opportunity to rethink their range of proposals in a more sustainable and higher-quality way and the opportunity for travelers to rethink the way they enjoy their holidays.

The current crisis could thus represent an important moment for pursuing the kind of pathways of tourist innovation already foreseen by Italy’s 2017–2022 national tourism strategic plan, pathways with the capacity to guide local and national growth. Precisely in light of the current situation, some scholars ( Kozul-Wright and Barbosa, 2020 ; Rab and Kettler, 2020 ; Sigala, 2020 ) have already called for taking advantage of this period of interruption to make wide-ranging structural changes to the tourism sector, starting with a renewed reflection on several aspects of sustainability policy. In fact, the research data on the habits and expectations of Italian tourists suggest that an alternative to the mass tourism model is possible. Future tourism could be zero kilometer and “slow.” These are niche phenomena that had already begun to take hold in recent years ( Hall, 2006 ; Nilsson et al. , 2011 ), attracting people interested in more intimate tourism, in the open air and in contact with nature, away from the masses and frenetic pace of the city ( Moralli and Allegrini, 2020 ; Seraphin and Dosquet, 2020 ).

Although it is difficult to observe the situation from such a perspective in this moment of serious crisis, the historical and social moment may lend itself to repositioning and redeveloping places and structures of the territories of tourism, bringing them more in line with international criteria of sustainability, ethics and aesthetics. However, to make such a move possible, it is necessary to reallocate resources, mitigate the overtourism of certain places, invest in environmentally responsible ways and care for people and local areas.

In this situation, even Italian urban centers can benefit from the uncertainty of this historical period: the drop in arrivals will be inevitable, especially as much of the foreign component will be missing, but there could instead be an increase in tourists from nearby areas, once again following local itineraries or in any case at short range ( Milano et al. , 2019 ).

This scenario represents an opportunity for local areas to identify new and more sustainable ways of welcoming and managing tourist flows. In other words, starting from the current situation of undertourism, cities have the opportunity to reformulate their range of tourist offerings according to a sustainable perspective ( La Rocca, 2013 ; Papa and Fistola, 2016 ).

Also the hospitality sector, including museums, galleries and attractions, has to imagine a structural change in the tourist offer. Most likely not all businesses will survive the crisis. Companies that intend to endure should take action immediately to identify the most suitable strategies to reassure the new tourist demand, responding to the needs of travelers in an appropriate manner.

As the recovery of international tourism is likely to be slow, the hospitality sector could benefit from domestic demand, as residents currently prefer to forego overseas holidays for domestic holidays.

However, even in response to the economic crisis that has affected many workers, the hospitality sector should be not only more attractive, but also economically viable and competitive.

Last but not least, we have seen that safety and hygiene have become key factors to select destinations and tourism activities. This must be an important lesson from which to start re-imagining and reviewing the specific company policies. In addition, tourist destinations and businesses should prioritize younger travelers, who at this moment seem to be the least frightened of the virus, probably also because of the fact that the average age of the victims of the pandemic is very high ( Goldstein and Lee, 2020 ; Boehmer, 2020 ).

They must create the right product offerings and promote them on the most appropriate communication channels, especially using the online ones.

The uncertain period requires transparency in communication. For this reason, another incentive could be to ensure the greatest possible clarity on cancellation and refund policies in case of critical situations or in the face of unexpected travel restrictions.

Tourists will be able to learn to adapt to the unpredictability of post-COVID tourism only if companies also demonstrate that they are the first to be flexible to change.

A final consideration concerns the areas that have been most affected by the pandemic in the past few months and which, despite having moved past the emergency phase, are victims of an emerging prejudice powered by the fear that these places may still harbor the virus. These sites must work to identify specific territorial marketing and place branding strategies capable of freeing them from the image of continuing danger. In this regard, it might be useful to accompany any initiative with both epidemiological data on the rate of infections and evidence of the safety measures that have been adopted on-site.

Duration of tourist experiences (pre-COVID and post-COVID comparison)

Travel companions (pre-COVID and post-COVID comparison)

Accommodation (pre-COVID and post-COVID comparison)

Means of transport (pre-COVID and post-COVID comparison)

Independence test (chi-square) for duration of tourist experiences

Independence test (chi-square) for travel companions

Independence test (chi-square) for accommodation

Independence test (chi-square) for means of transport

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Acknowledgements

Authors would like to acknowledge all the colleagues of OUT (Osservatorio Universitario sul Turismo) in the Departments of Social Science at University of Naples Federico II.

Authors are grateful to Rosanna Cataldo, Gabriella Grassia and Pietro Maturi for their support and inspiring suggestions.

Corresponding author

About the authors.

Fabio Corbisiero is Associate Professor. His research draws from the literatures on urban sociology, tourism studies, gender and LGBT studies, and it focuses on understanding how the spatial organization creates and reproduces inequality for vulnerable social categories. Fabio Corbisiero’s current research agenda investigates (1) how the urban context, particularly the experience of European cities, determines the life chances of vulnerable people; (2) how tourism forms emerge and evolve in urban contexts; (3) how places and geographies structure socio-economic opportunity in Italy and elsewhere. He is Coordinator of Osservatorio LGBT and OUT (Osservatorio Universitario sul Turismo) of the University of Naples Federico II.

Salvatore Monaco is a postdoctoral researcher in sociology at the Faculty of Education, Free University of Bozen (Italy), where he is adjunct professor of “Genders, Identities and Territories.” He achieved PhD degree in “Social Sciences and Statistics” at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Naples Federico II. He has been a researcher of Osservatorio LGBT and OUT (Osservatorio Universitario sul Turismo) of the University of Naples Federico II for several years. His research interests include tourism, technologies and territories with particular focus on identities, genders, sexual orientations and generations.

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Italy is bracing for a record wave of tourists, but is having trouble handling them

B ellagio, Lake Como, Italy — When boat drivers start complaining about the tourists overrunning this famous lakeside resort, where Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce stayed at the Villa Sola Cabiati in Tremezzo two weeks ago after her series of Paris concerts, you know you have a problem. 

"There are days when traffic comes to a stop, you cannot move," our driver told us. He makes his living driving tourists up and down the lake for the famous views of the mountains and the 19th-century villas like Villa del Balbianello, where parts of "Casino Royale" and "Star Wars: Episode II" were filmed. 

He considers himself fortunate he's a boat driver: he pities the poor tourists who rent cars or try to find an elusive taxi. 

"Some days it can take an hour to go 10 kilometers [about 6 miles]," he said, noting that the tiny two-lane roads not only can't handle the traffic, they can't handle the larger cars that are being built. "Many towns can only have traffic go in one direction, so everyone has to wait," he said. 

Can't live with them, can't live without them

Italy is caught in an envious trap: it can't live without tourists, but it's having trouble handling the influx, particularly after Covid. Sixty million tourists flooded the country last year, pumping an enormous amount of money into the economy. Travel and tourism accounted for 10.2% of Italy's GDP in 2022, according to Statista.  The sector employs approximately 4.4 million people, about 16% of total employment. 

The problem of "too many tourists" may seem like a problem a country wants to have, but in recent years the crush of visitors has gotten so bad that Italian authorities have had to take measures to avoid damage to centuries old structures that cannot handle the crush of so many visitors. Venice has been charging 5 euros to enter the city for day travelers not staying overnight, for example. 

Want to see Da Vinci's "Last Supper" in Milan? Good luck: tickets are sold out weeks in advance, and to avoid irreparable damage to the painting visitors are restricted to roughly 30 at a time for a maximum of 15 minutes. 

Not only are there too many tourists, there's not enough people to serve them. 

The Italian Association of Employment Agencies (Assolavoro) noted there is a shortage of staff to work in the hotel and beach sectors this summer, which is expected to see a new record for tourists. There's shortages of chefs and waiters in Marche. In Sardinia, about 25,000 seasonal workers are needed. 

Italy a bargain? Not quite, but there is a lot of value  

Food is still surprisingly affordable, at least compared to New York prices. An espresso in Milan, an hour away, can be had for 1 euro (about $1.10). Croissants for two or three euros. 

At the famous Trattoria Milanese in the center of Milan, a generous serving of the city's two most famous dishes — veal Milanese, and osso bucco with risotto Milanese, will only set you back about $30-$35 apiece, and can be had much cheaper in less famous spots. Outstanding local wines can be bought for $20-$30 in restaurants and $10 in the supermarket. 

Even Milan's famous bars are not stratospheric. At Camparino in the Galleria, one of the temples of cocktail culture in Italy, you can have a negroni or Aperol spritz for $20, prepared by ridiculously good-looking 25 year old waiters in formal wear preening for the uber-dressed-up crowd strolling past, heading for a night of opera at La Scala. 

The crush of visitors means reservations are tough to get. Here on Lake Como, it's still nearly impossible to get a reservation at the Veranda restaurant at one of George Clooney's favorite spots, Villa D'Este (if you're lucky to snag one, be sure to show up: no-shows are charged 100 euros per person). 

Clooney himself lives up the street, at Villa Oleandra, which was featured in his film, "Ocean's Twelve." 

Of course, if you really want to hang out with A-list, there are no bargains. The famous Villa La Cassinella on the lake can be yours, for 100,000 euros a week. A wedding at Villa Balbiano can cost 320,000 euros, but we're talking 110 people for 3 days. The same 110 wedding guests will set you back 250,00-500,000 euros at the Grand Hotel Tremezzo. 

Thinking of calling Uber? Forget it

It's not only hard to get a reservation: it's hard to get a taxi to get there. Or anywhere. 

Sharing the phone numbers of reliable private taxi drivers is a bit of an obsession in Lake Como, where the roads are so narrow and crowded, and taxis few and far between, that even short trips must be booked in advance. 

It was so hard to get around, even in Milan, that I just hired the cab driver who picked us up at the airport for two days. I was puzzled that the only Uber options were high-priced black cars.

My driver flew into a rage when I mentioned Uber. 

"These people are trying to steal the jobs of the taxi drivers," he screamed. "They are taking my job. The politicians have been paid to allow them into the country." He was planning to go on strike next week, along with the other taxi drivers. 

He doesn't have much to worry about. 

"The Uber service you are familiar with in North America where private individuals drive their own cars is illegal in Italy since 2015," travel writer Rick Steves said in a note to his readers last year. 

"Only licensed taxi and limo drivers can provide that service. As a result Uber does provide a service in Italy (called Uber Black, Uber Van) but when you summon a car with Uber, a licensed official black limo driver with a luxury car will show up and as a result the price will be higher than a regular taxi," Steves advised. 

A lot higher. Uber wanted 100 euros to take me less than a mile, a 10-minute ride, in central Milan. I paid the cab driver 170 euros for five hours. 

Still, standing in front of the "Last Supper," even for 15 minutes, provides one of those sublime experiences that makes the hassle worthwhile. 

I was glad it only lasted 15 minutes. I had to get out to call the restaurant we were going to that night for a reservation, and make sure I had a cab to get there. Being a tourist in Italy is turning into a full-time job.