Paper short abstract:

This contribution explores whether tourism can be interpreted as a viable development strategy in the Italian “Inner Areas”, and the implications of creating a tourism market where basic services are still lacking, in an attempt to overcome the widespread idea that “tourism is the easiest way”.

Paper long abstract:

In 2012 the Italian Minister for Economic Development launched the "National Strategy for Inner Areas" (SNAI). The latter are areas located at a considerable distance from urban hubs providing essential services (namely education, health and transport), which since the 1950s have undergone a process of marginalisation and de-anthropisation, although around one quarter of Italy's population still lives there. The aim of SNAI is to create developmental tools likely to foster a series of improvements in the wellbeing of the population, which concern different aspects, i.e. access to basic services and better use of the social and territorial capital. By means of an initial screening of the national territory, 20 areas have been selected to enter the pilot phase of the strategy, which will end in 2020; and many of them are already drawing up the preliminary drafts of their local strategy, which include an analysis of the resources already available in each area and the possible actions which could be successfully applied to foster long-period development. What emerges from these drafts is that the great majority of the selected "inner areas" considers the creation (or the implementation) of a tourism market as a trigger for local development processes. This paper will explore the ways in which tourism is locally interpreted as a viable development strategy, and the negative externalities of creating a tourism market in areas where basic services are still lacking, in an attempt to overcome the widespread idea that "tourism is the easiest way".