The Hospitality Sector in Italy. Hotel Industry and Tourist Flows in Rome in the Interwar Period

This study focuses on the evolution of the tourist accommodation sector in Italy in the interwar period, relating it to the development of tourist flows. In the first post-war period, the recovery of the Italian hotel industry was quite rapid and soon turned into a development process that lasted, with alternating phases, almost until the Second World War. Thisdevelopment was most evident in those areas which, due to their natural or artistic beauty, had a greater capacity to attract tourists. Among these areas, one of the most significant examples is the city of Rome, which constitutes the case study that will be examined. During these years, the hospitality sector was fed by tourist flows that were becoming more substantial and changing in composition. The weight of traditional elite tourism was gradually diminishing as other social segments began to account for a larger part of the tourist demand. At that time, it was mainly the white-collar middle classes that fed this process of change, anticipating the later massification of tourism. Moreover, domestic tourism became the largest component, at least in terms of numbers. It is worth noting that the Fascist regime partly contributed to these changes through various initiatives that helped to bring tourism closer to many Italians who had previously been excluded from it and who, in those years, began to “experience the joys of tourism”. The spread of tourism among Italians formed part of the strategies to consolidate popular consensus in a totalitarian view of the control of the leisure time of the masses, but the regime also paid attention to increasing foreign tourism, which had always been crucial in the balance of payments adjustment processes. As a result, the Italian hotel system, including that of Rome, was faced with the need to transform and update the tourist hospitality offered in the various market segments, but, for various reasons, it was only partially able to satisfy the modernisation requirements demanded by the market.