Dynamics of Tourism in Southern Italy. The Sector’s Contribution to the Development of the South and the Rebalancing of Territorial Gaps

The aim of this work was to examine in depth the role of the tourism sector in Southern Italy, beyond the commonplaces and vulgate that the sector could be, together with agriculture, the backbone of the southern economy’s development. The data processed confirms the limited size of the Southern tourism industry compared to the development needs of the Southern Italian Regions: even a doubling of tourist presences would not have the possibility of creating those jobs needed to bring the area’s activity rate to levels comparable to those in the Centre-North of Italy. The tourism sector was analysed using various ISTAT databases, in particular, considering its economic weight in relation to the total productive sectors, its growth in the pre-Covid period, and its capacity for recovery after the collapse of world tourist flows in 2020. The picture that emerged is that of an important supply chain, with a significant economic weight and considerable unexpressed potential – mainly concentrated in the Southern Regions – but in itself insufficient to support the development of a broad and articulated production system, in a demographically wide territory such as the South of Italy. In a first overview of the national tourism supply chain, data on traveller flows in Italy are compared with those of other countries with a strong «touristic vocation», highlighting a decline in Italy’s share of the total touristic presences in relation to the major competitor countries. In order to highlight the unexpressed potential of the supply chain in Southern Italy, touristic flows in the Regions, the Metropolitan Cities, and the top 30 Italian municipalities by number of presences are analysed, also noting the existing touristic offer in terms of the number of accommodation facilities and available beds. On a more cyclical level, the sector’s resilience to the 2020 crisis was verified. After a careful analysis of the interventions in favour of the sector financed by the PNRR, the topic of policies is addressed, with some suggestive hypotheses.