Maria Della Lucia_Full Paper

Law 135/2001, which deals with the “Reform of national legislation on tourism” recognizes the strategic role of tourism in the economic and occupational development of Italy, which is realized through the competitive growth of the tourist offering at the local, regional and national level. At a local level, the law identifies the tourist offering with the Local Tourist System, and defines it as the “homogenous or integrated context of tourism, comprising territorial areas that can belong to different regions, characterized by an integrated offering of cultural and environmental assets as well as tourist attractions, including typical agricultural products and local handicrafts, or by the widespread presence of individual or associated tourist enterprises” (Art. 5, paragraph 1). The Law acknowledges the importance of a systemic approach to the development of tourism, as outlined in the literature on Destination Management (Ritchie 1993; Laws 1995; Leiper 1995; Bieger 2000; Buhalis 2000; Keller 2000; Pechlaner and Weiermair 2000; Franch 2002) and on Local Systems of Tourist Offering (Rispoli and Tamma 1995; Casarin 1996; Tamma 1999; Della Corte 2000). In particular, the Law identifies the local tourist system as the geographic unit at which to define an integrated tourist offering and at which to manage the development of tourism in the territory and the entirety of the resources in the territory. In this sense the Law encourages an integrated development of tourism and provides public resources to finance Local Tourist systems and their related development projects. The Law has not been applied systematically and homogeneously throughout the Italian territory. Neither does the concept of destination found in the literature on tourism help to define a precise geographic dimension that makes it easier to identify local tourist systems (Franch 2002). In light of this normative and theoretical gap in the identification of local tourist systems, this paper uses the model of industrial districts to check for the presence of and to identify local tourist systems, and from among these to look for tourist districts. This model was designed initially for the study of industrial development (Becattini 1979 and 2000; Bellandi 1982 and 1987; Dei Ottati 1995; Sforzi 1987). Recently, however, some studies have noted and provided clarity on the connections between the industrial district and models of non-industrial local development (Bellandi and Sforzi 2003). With reference to tourism, the community models of tourist development (Murphy 1985; Kaspar 1995; Bieger 1998; Flagestadt and Hope 2001) show characteristics analogous to those typically found in local industrial development – spatial concentration, productive specialization, small size of