La spesa regionale per il turismo: efficacia e indicazioni per la governance

In Italy, the contribution of tourism to GDP growth in the past few years has decreased, confirming an obvious loss of competitiveness of the tourist industry in our country, due to numerous endogenous structural factors and to governance issues, as opposed to the development of a re-defined and more diversified international scenario. Given these basic indications, this paper’s intended goal is to analyse, by institutional sub-sector, the efficiency and efficacy of regional administration expenditure on tourism, comparing the trend of public spending with the competencies in place at the different levels of government. Within a context in which each region expresses an individual specialisation in terms of both the provenance of tourist flows and the type of demand, the policies which need to be implemented in support of the sector cannot ignore the significant differences which exist among the single regional areas. The analysis carried out in this paper confirms that the multitude of entities engaged in the promotion of Italian tourism are marred by organisational and governance problems. In essence, the need emerges for a stronger link between a national policy for tourism and regional policies, as well as for a shared vision among all the entities involved.