The demand trend of Italian agritourism

The demand side for agritourism in Italy has not been fully investigated despite the relatively high number of studies of the supply side. Thus, this paper statistically examined the trends in the demand side for agritourism in Italy in comparison with tourism demand in general, such as that for hotels. 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. The results are as follows. (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) Region-wise, the central region accounts for a large portion of agritourism demand and the southern region had the largest growth rate, while more than half of tourism demand in general went to the north in the case of hotel demand. (3) 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. Among inbound European tourists, tourists from Scandinavia, UK and Germany increased sharply and therefore 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, such as the availability of land routes, a common currency with no risk presented by exchange rates, etc., 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.