Tourism in Balance and Public Investments in Italian regions.

Tourism in Balance (TiB) is a European project aimed at promoting cities’ sustainability and mitigating the negative effects of overtourism. An important strategy to support TiB is the promotion of “multi-destination trips”, i.e. attracting international tourists to the main destinations and then encouraging their dispersion towards nearby secondary destinations. This paper uses Italian microdata to measure the regional competitiveness in TiB by estimating a probability model of foreign tourists’ preference to visit more than one destination within the same NUTS3 region during the trip. Moreover, the analysis looks at the impact of regional public investments in tourism and mobility, over both short- and long-term horizons, on tourists’ multi-destination decision. Results point out the important role of mobility investments to support TiB. The effects that emerge are positive but not linear over time, i.e. they are initially negative and become positive only after ten years from the investment.