Territorial Accommodation and Innovation. New Regional Scenarios of sustainability

The territorial accommodation was the central theme of the research project of the Local Unit to build upon experiences and competencies of its partners, which belong to different thematic sectors, by using a inter-disciplinary approach. The research organized the knowledge on territorial accommodation, to create instruments of advanced analysis and to identify new strategies for small and medium enterprises in the light of enhancing the territorial value through the transfer of know-how, investments and innovation processes and competition with big hotel chains. In particular the research focused on some specific objectives such as: 1. Reclassify the regional accommodation structure in the national framework, in accordance with a systemic approach to highlight the territorial links between tourism and agriculture, industry and services; 2. Study the hospitality sector through thematic analyses to enhance the natural and cultural heritage of local communities, with a particular focus on farm holidays and religious tourism, which are the traditional typologies of the history of the Italian tourism; 3. Elaborate a territorial accommodation database model in order to support sustainable tourism strategies to build a transferable know-how that all Italian and Mediterranean regions. This is also become a standard tool capable of generating complete and integrated computerized cartographic representations in order to : a) build a GIS for spatial analysis, intended to evaluate the local accommodation offer on the basis of synthetic indicators; b) build a database standard to create a WebGIS for tourist territorial marketing, on the basis of best practices, selected experiences, and methodological analysis which have been already utilized for the elaboration of the ERVET regional atlas of industrial sites; 4. Examine some instruments for sustainability in tourism: from the environmental impacts assessment of individual projects and plans, to tourist programmes, to the certification of private and public receptive structures, carrying out recognitions at different territorial scales and analysing case studies; 5. Identify specific instruments to plan, conserve and manage cultural tourist itineraries in the Mediterranean area, in order to promote new tourist flows and enhance the value of historic, artistic and cultural resources; 6. Strengthen the research and education networks at the European and Mediterranean scale both in the planning phase and in joining already exiting ones.