Tourism as Possible Opportunity to Address the Crisis in Italy

Tourism today represents one of the world's leading export commodity, accounting for global earnings of more than 200 billion Euro, about 25 per cent of total world GNP (Poirier 2000, p30, cited in Dieke, 2000). In the last 20 years, tourism has made a very important contribution to the global economy, being the fastest growing sector in terms of external revenue and new jobs. The economic and financial crisis that has affected the world economy in 2008, has led to decreasing the flow of tourists, but the tourism sector seems to be save by the new tourist that arrives from the emerging countries. In this context Italy face with a decrease in the number of tourists and a soft negative trend. The huge cultural heritage that characterize Italy and its beauty, should represent an important incentive of both, policy makers and private sector, for the relaunch of this important sector.