No. 4 (2012)

The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the main definitions related to the statistics on tourism, agreed and adopted at international and inter-institutional level. The importance of having well-defined and shared basic concepts allows to be clear on what is the precise framework of the phenomena to be analyzed and what topics to be collected by statistical surveys. Then the Italian official statistical sources to capture the touristic flows are briefly described with a particular attention on their differences, the forms of tourism covered and the overlaps. The paper also presents many graphical and figurative representations to better highlight the expressed concepts.

This paper summarizes main findings arising from Sustainable and Accessible Tourism Action Plan for the Municipality of Palau, a notable sea-sand-sun destination located in the Mediterranean Basin in north-eastern coast of Sardinia. Recognizing increasingly declining signals in a mature tourist context, Palau Action Plan declines the EU framework into the local dimension. Through the adoption of an integrated approach, it moves towards diversification, an higher quality and innovation of the supply of tourist services, based on respective comparative advantages and developed on thematic tourist products.

The paper summarizes the results of a study carried out for the Italian Ministry of Finance aimed to identify competition/business models (MOB from the Italian version “Modelli di Business”) to orientate the industrial policy towards the SMEs, within the Italian Hotel sector. The Italian Hotel Sector is composed by over 33,500 units which represent the 26% of the total means of accommodation and 47% of the total bed places. The structure of the sector is still characterized by a large number of small dimension units with a family-based management, an average number of 8 employees per firm and an average gross revenue of 500.000€ per year. Only 0.8% of the firms produce a gross revenue exceeding 5 million €, while 40% is grouped within the range from 250,000 to 1,000.000.

Tourism sensorial, is environmental integrated factor with many instances that are the sensory, and tourism activities with the typical productions of the territory, developed in the cultural market of the agry-food system. Environment is a factor of recently acquired for marketing thanks to the bio-economy and its reflections, equating integrated in the tourist system not only for industrial company. Marketing, or rather the Ethic Sensorial Tourist Marketing is a real cultural- economic process environmentally friendly. Needs with virtual instruments technically valid to induce the system environment and the territory of the existing system to be close to the modern consumer, not away from the traditions and from pre-existing culture.