Prelims

Half Title Page

Tourism in the Mediterranean Sea

Title Page

Tourism in the Mediterranean Sea: An Italian Perspective

Edited by

Filippo Grasso

Bruno S. Sergi

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2021

© 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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ISBN: 978-1-80043-901-6 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80043-900-9 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80043-902-3 (Epub)

List of Tables

List of Figures

About the Editors

Filippo Grasso is a Professor of Market Analysis at the University of Messina. He deals with issues related to the governance of tourism policies and is the delegate of the Rector of the University of Messina for ‘scientific initiatives in the tourism sector’. He is a consultant to the National President of the Italian ‘Pro Loco’, Unpli, Rome. He was formerly a consultant for the Department of Tourism of the Sicily Region and some Sicilian Municipalities. He is a member of the technical table on ‘Tourism of the Roots’ set up by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is the author of the book Tourism: Managing the Territory, Managing Resources, Promoting the Destination (Maurfix, Rome, 2018) and co-author of the volume Tourism Law and Practice (Maurfix, Rome, 2019). He is also the curator and co-author of the book New Hiking Itineraries for Slow and Sustainable Tourism: The Ring of Nisi (Edas, Messina, 2019).

Bruno S. Sergi is an Instructor on the Economics of Emerging Markets and the Political Economy of Russia and China at Harvard University and an Associate of the Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. He is a Full Professor of Political Economy at the University of Messina, Italy. He is the Series Editor of Cambridge Elements in the Economics of Emerging Markets, Editor of Emerald Publishing book series Entrepreneurship and Global Economic Growth, Co-series Editor of the Emerald Publishing book series Lab for Entrepreneurship and Development and Associate Editor of The American Economist. He is a co-founder and Scientific Director of the International Center for Emerging Markets Research at RUDN University in Moscow. He has published several articles in professional journals and many books as an author, co-author, editor or co-editor.

List of Contributors

Introduction

Tourism is primarily a vital industry for local communities' social and environmental development. Tourism stimulates the economy by generating income, employment and investments. Human resources are the true differential and competitive value of tourism as we believe that human and social capital formation determines the quality of tourist activity. The time has come for the advancement of wide-ranging reflections that may concern shared research visions and paths through careful reading and thought by the essays of the various contributors who have written on issues related to tourism and its variations.

The present volume offers a panorama of transdisciplinary study to favour a new generation of university students wishing to know regional strategies. This volume intends to train young university students to contribute to an elevated level of qualification and contribute to innovation in economic growth and the competitiveness of the international markets' territorial tourism system. The volume enhances supranational policy in the complex tourist phenomenon of the Mediterranean area.

The volume also aims at those professionals who work in the tourism sector with integrated skills and supply a careful interpretative reading of processes and phenomena. The readers can make detailed and relational analyses adequate of the elements that characterize the different contexts, on a local and global scale, and provide aspects of territorial screening useful to the local tourism policies adopted by public and private decision-makers.

This book's goal is to contribute to supporting an in-depth political tourism analysis in the Mediterranean area that goes beyond the prompt actions of the individual territories. It is a harmonious framework of conventional thought in all the public areas involved, thus helping public and private decision-makers implement specific indications of strategies, actions and good practices of tourism governance.

Not to be neglected is the interdisciplinary nature of the humanistic, territorial, economic and social subjects to prepare professional figures to plan local tourism development plans and disciplines that interpret the leading role of ‘new tourists’. Lifestyles tend to abolish the hierarchies between high and low culture, the search for accurate knowledge of the place, openness to diversity, seasonal adjustment (short break), the need for doing tourism to feel fulfilled, and no longer to celebrate belonging to the industrial society. Through the study of SWOT analysis techniques and the ‘customer tourist’, the volume would continue refresher courses for professional re-qualification that are part of an integrated supply chain. The best investment is in human resources, new figures of technical directors, tourist guides and interpreters, museum communicators and territorial organizers, local development coordinators, destination managers, among others.

The interplay of universities and professional education might favour the demand and supply, generating critical positive impacts on employment opportunities and revitalizing the economic system for small businesses. An expressed concept is the importance of a tourist culture to be strengthened with an internal marketing action. It can be considered ways more important than external marketing. If people are unskilled, they go far neither in terms of design nor in promotional and commercial terms. For any hypothesis of territorial marketing, they assume a significant role: human resources; knowing how to define competencies in their multiple and various expressions represents a fundamental value of the territory, the uniqueness and authenticity that are proper to it.

For this reason, this book constructs innovative and quality training projects, of human capital. It appears competitiveness to support the internationalization and fast digitization of services and hospitality. A government system of the territories that develops a region's strategy involves clear and targeted aims, indicators and right practice actions for quality tourism in the Mediterranean area. The participating promo-marketing of the territories involved in the development of tourist destinations in Mediterranean countries includes themed tourism products (e.g. soft, slow and sustainable mobility, gastronomy, cultural events, nature, wellness). It also encourages territories and stakeholders to work on strengthening and diversifying tourism products throughout the year, improve and enhance the training of skills and experience for quality services. It increases the awareness that environmental and economic sustainability is a value to protect in light of ‘over-tourism’ and ‘hit-and-run’ tourism.

Thus, tourism becomes a factor of local development: the local community tries to be no longer dependent on demand and develops the concept of integrated and quality tourism.

The economic growth illustrated in various parts of chapters puts the current economic and cultural development towards consumption models oriented to the satisfaction also of intangible needs. Most of the exchanges are on a market transaction, but the value created exceeds the part economic, including the social and psychological content that characterizes everyone's experience.

The responsibility to promote the tourism and cultural sector in intersectoral destinations, mobilizing goods and people, and increasing the competitiveness of this industry. The ability to create a system, and the strength of knowing how to attract quality investments in the tourism sector generate sound effects on the economic and social development policies if strongly supported by the local tourism governance involved in the decision-making processes.

We wish the readers and students that the present book helps to deepen the problems related to the development of tourism governance policies in the destinations. At the same time, it is an indispensable drive for the effective planning of asset valuations. This culture combines the people's identity and the production chains of the same destinations involved.

Grasso, Sergi

August 2020