THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL POSITIONING OF ITALIAN DESTINATIONS

Abstract

In Italy, tourism is traditionally one of the most important driving sector of economic growth at the local level. The aim of the work is to explore the domestic inter-regional flow (the major share of Italian tourism) of the 20 Italian regions. This paper adopts a Multidimensional Scaling technique based on origin-destination matrix of domestic tourism flows. The findings point out geographical proximity, infrastructural factors and economic strength, in addition to specific place-based tourist resources, appears to be the determining factors of the competitive positioning. These results are useful to improve the further decision-making of different agents involved in tourism industry and the region’s capacity to attract domestic tourists.

Keywords

• Domestic tourism
• Italian regions
• Origin-Destination matrix
• Multidimensional Scaling