Tourism: inland areas are becoming increasingly attractive, but the issue of services remains
Key points
Tourists are venturing out of the city centres (artistic hubs) to explore the countryside and the hinterland. This presents an economic opportunity for inland areas – regions at high risk of depopulation – provided that efforts are made to improve services.
For years, Italian tourism has grown by concentrating on the same destinations, but something is changing. The study ‘Broadening Horizons: Online Platforms and the Diversification of Italian Tourism’ by the consultancy firm Formules, which will be discussed in Pordenone on 5 November as part of Eureka Expo, examines ten years of bookings on the GetYourGuide platform (a marketplace for excursions and experiences) and shows that visitors are increasingly interested in provinces and inland areas, as well as major cities.
Inland areas and provinces are becoming increasingly attractive
In 2015, Lazio accounted for the clear majority (72 per cent) of tour bookings, and 97 per cent of the total was accounted for by this region and three others: Veneto, Lombardy and Tuscany. Ten years on – partly thanks to the expansion of GetYourGuide, founded in Switzerland in 2007: in Italia, the volume of bookings has grown 36-fold over the past decade – Lazio’s share has fallen to 39 per cent, and demand now spans all Italian regions. This includes inland areas – and therefore territories far from schools, hospitals and transport links – which cover over 60 per cent of Italian territory, comprising 4,000 municipalities, the majority of which are small, and a total of 13 million inhabitants. These are areas at high risk of depopulation, affected by youth emigration and unattractive to investors, with the exception of a few specific cases.
54 per cent of the 867 municipalities involved in the GetYourGuide initiatives (present in 105 of Italy’s 110 provinces) had fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, 35.76 per cent had fewer than 5,000 and 7.38 per cent fewer than 1,000 (figures relating to the platform’s presence in 2025).
Bookings for activities via the platform paint a picture of a trend that extends beyond urban boundaries: between 2021 and 2025, bookings in the province of Rome increased almost eightfold. In the Verona area, they increased more than sevenfold – partly thanks to Lake Garda – and in 2025 they continued to rise whilst those in the city centre fell. In 2021 and 2022, the number of experiences booked in the province of Naples exceeded those in the city itself.
