Reasons we need to concern ourselves with tourism in Italy
Annamaria Testa
A kind way to describe tourist promotion in Italy is ‘embarrassing’. ‘Despairing’ if one wants to be realistic. However, changes are supposed to happen lately: the National Associated Press Agency (ANSA) wrote an hopeful headline regarding the new National Tourist Agency (Enit) board of directors: “Italian tourism at a turning point”. It is to be hoped that substantial changes will come soon, although, as my grandma would say, “more haste, less speed” still holds.
Let us look at some facts to contextualize the problem . With eleven hundred thirty-three million travellers, the recent years have seen the greatest global tourist expansion of all times: in 2014, tourism
…show more content…
We are now fifth in the world’s most visited countries top ten list after France, USA, Spain and China, and before Turkey. It seems we should be glad of it, but that is not entirely true.
Nowadays, tourism industry in Italy is growing, but less than in other countries - if other country’s growth is greater than ours is, it means we lag behind. During the ‘50es, almost one tourist out of five used to come to Italy and we were the most visited country in the world. Now, only one tourist out of 23 travels to Italy. During the ‘50es, Spain did not even appear in the most visited group. Now, Spain is the first tourist destination in Europe and the third in the world. There is something that Spain understood and did that we did not.
In addition to a growth in numbers, tourism industry is one of the economic sectors that grows the most. There are two charts to take into consideration: the first concerns the incoming tourist amount, the second one the amount of money they spend in the country (this is the one that really interests us). In the latter chart, Spain is in world’s second place after the USA and we go down to the sixth
…show more content…
Those are the classic marketing four “p” (product, price, place, and promotion), an interpretive model created in the late sixties. I am afraid it is still unknown to some of the tourist industry national protagonists. Some countries attract tons of tourists with rock-bottom prices . In the competitive price index, which compares tourist attractions and tourist packages in 144 countries, Mexico is in 55th place, Spain 105th and Italy 133rd. Italy has high labour costs, but declaring a price war on Mexico and Spain to compete with them is not a realistic option. Moreover, a low-cost mass tourism model isn’t quite compatible with our territory.
Well, excluding price war, there are three levers left. Let’s start with place - meaning both the location where one gets to know and buys the travel-product and the place to reach to “consume” the
Mack, Benjamin. “Tourism overwhelms vanishing Venice.” DW.DE. Deutsche Welle, 11 Sept. 2012. Web. 12 Jan. 2014. .
Globalization and the advance of technology in the last two decades as well as the growing role of the Internet and social media in the interactions of people have brought up the changes never seen before. For many the world has become a “smaller place” where distance and borders are hardly an obstacle anymore for conducting business or traveling. Thanks to improvements in transportation, we are able to cross borders with ease and go to any place on earth in a matter of hours.
Thanks to these factors, pricing becomes one of the primary uses with which hotels attract customers. However, due to customers’ independent nature, there influence over industry players is limited. In the high-end segment of hotels, price influence becomes even less as hotels find it easier to differentiate themselves from the competition and customers become less price sensitive coming to expect higher prices as a symbolism of superior quality and services. Lastly, corporate business and tour operators can exert more influence due to their large purchases but this affect is of a limited nature and does not extend across the whole
Tourism is an industry that is highly influenced by price, destinations with a high price competitiveness will certainly attract more tourists (Dwyer, Forsyth & Rao, 2002). When the exchange rate of Australian dollar is low, it will cost Australians more than before when they are travelling abroad, causing the overall price competitiveness of foreign destinations to decrease. The perception of a broad destination is expensive will more or less halt people from travelling there to seek for other domestic alternatives as a result of substitution effect (Quadri & Zheng,
For the introduction, brief information regarding my purchase and the travel and tourism industry is presented. It was then followed by the explanation of the 2 chosen theories from two different chapters.
Tourism has been described as a global activity with local implications. We are all aware of the tourism potential to boost economic diversity and growth within their regions. The decentralized nature of t...
The consumer, due to the economic decline, has developed a taste for an economical traveling experience, these substitutes offer cost undercuts. According to the United States Department of Labour, the unemployment rate in the US averaged to 8.9% in 2011. Higher unemployment rates strains discretionary spending, which in turn reduces the leisure travel by the customers. Sluggish wage gains and a credit crunch are all expected to keep customers relatively cautious in 2012. Thus, a weak economic outlook for the important markets of Hilton Worldwide would put pressure on its top line and bottom line growth (Hilton Worldwide, 12).
This essay aims to prove that even through the struggle and hardships Italy has recovered and is an established, profound nation. One way Italy rebuilt and rose above their past is with tourism. Tourism is very popular in Italy, which led to famous quotes about the beauty of the country such as, “This was Venice, and the flattering and suspect beauty this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air the arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism."
Some of the tourism products include: sun and beach, culture, nature, conventions, and recreational tourism with a general objective to increase tourists spending and length of stay, increase number of tourists that visit each year, and to diversify the destinations to attract other tourists. Most visitors come from the U.S. followed by Canada, Argentina, Colombia, United Kingdom, Brazil, Spain, Germany and France. Two straight years of record growth in Mexico’s tourism industry have coagulated importance as a in ideal for economic growth. According to Ministry of Tourism, tourism contributes over 8.7 percent to Mexico’s GDP and employs 3.6 million people, and it is the fourth most important source of foreign currency. “Revenues generated from international arrivals reached a record 16.2 billion, increase of 16.1 percent from 2013.
One of the major decisions of planning a vacation, is choosing a touristic country. Everyone wants to spend their
Tourism is a typical activity of fashion that the public participate widely and it has grown in importance over recorded human history. Innumerable articles refer tourism as “the world’s largest industry”; policy-makers, analysts, and scholars often speak of the size of the tourism compared to that of other industries (Smith 2004: 26). These series of misleading statement, together with the mass media’s reports (out of context), make the idea that tourism is a single large industry branded into many people’s minds. However, in this essay I will demonstrate that it is a simplistic and misleading idea, which should be replaced by the plural term, “tourism industries”. Moreover, tourism is not the world’s largest industry, but largest service sector.
Tourism is often associated with traveling to places away from home. Tourism has a big impact on the economic growth of some countries, which define the shape of their cities by producing different sectors like historic districts, convention centers, museums, malls, hotels, restaurants, and the list can be endless. Furthermore, tourism elements have been developed by cities for a variety of reasons including: situating themselves in the world by drawing a positive image and attracting visitors and for their money.
This essay is the respond to the Local Council Member who has wrong idea about a common archetype of adventure tourist. This misconception based on ignorance of current tourism industry, could potentially be a dangerous for local economy and development. The local authority must be well informed about present conditions with the tourism market, before they will make a far reaching decisions about the development direction in this industry. Currently, there are many organisations whose monitoring an international tourism business and this knowledge supposed to be good use for our common good.
In the more economically developed countries (MEDCs), synonymous mainly with the industrialised countries of the northern hemisphere there, has been an explosion in the growth of leisure and tourism industry, which is now believed to be the worlds second largest industry in terms of money generated. In order to differentiate between leisure and tourism it should be recognised that leisure often involves activities enjoyed during an individual’s free time, whereas tourism commonly refers to organised touring undertaken on a commercial basis. Development in the two areas could be attributed to changing patterns in working lives within the last four decades. Generally, people now have more disposable wealth, work shorter hours, receive longer, paid annual leave, retire earlier and have greater personal mobility. In addition, according to Marshall & Wood (1995), the growth of the tourist industry per se can be associated, in part, with the concentration of capital; the emergence of diversified leisure based companies, sometimes within wider corporate conglomerates and often associated with particular airlines. Furthermore, the development of tourism can generate employment both directly, in jobs created in the hotels, restaurants etc, and indirectly, through expenditure on goods and services in the local area. Nevertheless, although the tourist industry is competitive, which essentially keeps down the cost of foreign travel, the success of tourism in any one area can be ‘influenced by weather, changing consumer tastes, demographics, economic cycles, government policy, not to mention international terrorism and other forms of conflict.’(1) Although such factors may have a detrimental affect on the economy of a popular tourist destination (or even tourism in general, in light of September 11th 2001), the consequence of tourism in general is often three fold: environmental, social and cultural, which in turn has prompted a search for new ‘friendly’ approaches that are less destructive.
At the present time, one of the inseparable parts of the economic growth is considered as tourism industry. Commonly, tourism is the movement of people to other places for business or leisure purposes as well as covers their activities. Holloway and Humphreys defines that the places where tourists come and spend their money are called as “tourist destinations” in other words “receiving areas”. Many countries have been improving tourism to overcome economic difficulties since it is growing fast. The industry activities have been demonstrated a general positive trend in the economy and it has already become the inherent part of economic development. In host countries, tourism has led to such positive consequences as the improved infrastructure,