Сurrent State and Territorial Patterns of Tourism Development in Italy

Tourism is a profitable sector of the economy, which, despite all current challenges, is rapidly developing and prioritized for the development of economic, social and cultural realms in many countries. Leading positions in international tourism are occupied by European countries, in particular Italy. The article analyzes the current state and territorial features of tourism development in Italy, considering natural, historical and cultural tourist recourses and country hotel fund. The analysis bases on such key indicators as the tourism contribution to gross domestic product, the tourism contribution to employment, the tourism capital investments, the tourism inbound (foreign) and outbound (abroad) volume, the international tourism receipts. The geographical structure of tourist flows in Italy is considered. The country has a considerable territorial differentiation in terms of tourism development. An integral index was calculated for Italy regions to evaluate tourism development level with subsequent classification of regions according to this indicator. The calculated indices allowed delimiting of the six groups of regions with high, higher than average, medium, lower than average, low and very low tourism development levels respectively. The features of tourism development in the regions of each group are revealed. In particular, the highest intensity of tourist arrivals is observed in the alpine regions of the country, which specialize in ski tourism. The high level of tourism development is also typical for the northern and central regions of the country. The lowest intensity of tourism is observed in the south-eastern regions of the country. In general, contemporary tourist development of the country is characterized with annual growth in the number of tourist arrivals, significant revenues from the tourism industry, positive balance of tourist flows, high share of tourism in the country’s GDP, formation of world-famous centers of tourism, high tourist rates. All this indicates that Italy remains one of the tourism leaders in the international tourism market.