Cultural tourism: an integrated analysis based on official data

The main aim of this paper is to analyze cultural tourism in Italy and its relationship with the territory (that is considered the principal driver of the analysis) and to provide a tool to policy makers to know the territorial dynamics and identify the best local development policies. The cultural tourism is studied by the relation between tourism statistics and cultural statistics; data used for this study mainly derive from the official surveys produced by Istat (Italian National Institute for Statistics): “Capacity and Occupancy in accommodation establishments” and “Museums and other cultural institutions”. Through a georeferenced approach, mapping the variables on tourism (arrivals and bed places) and culture (museums/cultural exhibits and admissions) at Italian municipality level with reference to the year 2015, the analysis allows the identification of well-defined geographical areas having significant different tourism and cultural characteristics. A system is proposed to categorize the Italian territory in order to identify the areas with the greatest cultural-tourism vocation and those having greatest potential for development, focusing on the most explanatory case studies.