Tourism and Digital Endowment in Italy: a Spatial Analysis

In consideration of the recent trend reversal in the number of foreigners’ and residents’ arrivals and nights spent in the Italian tourism system, this work is proposing to evaluate to what extent the endowment of infrastructures for telephonic and telematic and the digital endowment among the enterprises are able to boost the domestic tourism demand in Italy. The results of the proposed spatial models confirm the general assumption regarding the centrality of the digitalization processes, both from the public interventions perspective and from the entrepreneurial initiatives perspective. In this way, the need to harmonize public and private policies becomes pivotal in order to revitalize and stimulate the internal tourism demand in Italy. The policy implications can be read as an instrument for rebalancing a troubling trend involving the tourism demand in Italy of the last 30 years.