Support to Italy’s tourism ecosystem: towards a more sustainable, resilient and digital tourism

The European Commission supported this flagship technical support project targeted at EU Member States wishing to build a more sustainable, resilient and digital tourism ecosystem. The flagship seeks to promote the digital and green transitions, strengthen regional cohesion and support the post COVID-19 recovery of tourism in Europe to make it fit for the future challenges in the global market. The flagship offers activity packages to enable Member States to engage in effective reforms in the area of the tourism ecosystem.

Context 

In 2021, Italy created a dedicated Ministry of Tourism. The project will focus on reinforcing the Ministry’s structure and capacity so that it can play a prominent role in consolidating a collaboration with public and private stakeholders’ governance in a data-driven approach. This also requires that robust and timely data is available, regularly updated, and periodically analysed according to defined methodologies to support decision-making. Italy’s national statistical office, ISTAT, prepares a Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) on a regular basis. However, a comprehensive and continuously updated data system is also needed to better understand the relationship between tourism demand and evaluate tourism’s economic competitiveness in a rapidly changing environment. In this context, the Ministry has just set up an internal Statistical Office whose governance, capacities and staff should be enhanced to ensure the Ministry can collect, manage and analyse tourism data and information. Additionally, reinforcing the digitalisation of the tourism ecosystem in Italy and creating value from the underlying data generated will help to enhance the competitiveness, sustainability and resilience of tourism businesses.

Support delivered

• Analysing the tourism data ecosystem with a view to enhance data access, management, and analysis processes; 
• Organising one capacity building workshop to upgrade the capacity to access, manage and analyse tourism statistics and preparing an action plan as a follow-up; 
• Analysing the current institutional framework and tourism governance situation; 
• Preparing a report, with guidance on designing and implementing an enhanced governance model for tourism; 
• Supporting recommendations to promote the digitalisation of the tourism ecosystem, with a particular focus on tourism SMEs;  
• Organising one technical workshop to discuss key challenges and opportunities to increase the uptake of digital technologies in the context of the Italian tourism sector and how to promote a greater digitalisation of the tourism ecosystem, with a particular focus on tourism SMEs; 
• Providing four technical workshops to boost administrative and stakeholder engagement capacity for effective and data-driven decision-making.

Results achieved  

The main results of this support project will be: 

• upgraded tourism statistics and narrowed TSA implementation gap;  
• strengthened tourism governance model, and improved enabling framework for promoting a more sustainable, resilient and digital tourism ecosystem.