Accessing Demand Characteristics of Agritourism in Italy

The purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate the demand characteristics of agritourism in Italy, which has not been fully investigated despite the relatively high number of the supply-side studies on the Italian agritourism. Design – First this paper conceptually characterized the features of agritourism as the old and modern types and outlined the trend of supply and demand in agritourism in Italy in comparison with Japan. Second, this paper statistically examined the characteristics in the demand side for agritourism in Italy in comparison with tourism demand in general, such as that for hotels. Methodology and approach – Data were obtained from ‘Annuario Statistico Italiano’ edited and issued by ISTAT (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica). Data from 1997 were compared with those from 2006. We examined the regional characteristics and trends in the composition of domestic and inbound tourists in relation to agritourism. Findings – (1) Agritourism experienced rapid growth in the number of beds available and of those tourists who stayed overnight during the last decade while the operation rate of agritourism is much lower than that of tourism in general. (2) The market for agritourism domestic demand accounted for more than half of the total agritourism demand. The remaining demand was filled by inbound tourists from European countries. These inbound tourists are driving the growth of agritourism in this country. Even if we consider the particular reasons for low barriers to travel in Europe, these findings clearly indicate that it is essential for the development of agritourism to count not only on domestic but also inbound tourists to raise the operation rate. Originality of the research – The originality comes from the investigation of agritourism in Italy by focusing on the demand factors in comparison with tourism in general.