The Applied Sociology of Tourism. The Up Skills of the Facilitator in the Italian Hospitality Industry

doi:10.4236/aasoci.2013.31001

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Advances in Applied Sociology

2013. Vol.3, No.1, 1-12

Published Online March 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/aasoci) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/aasoci.2013.31001

The Applied Sociology of Tourism. The Up Skills of the

Facilitator in the Italian Hospitality Industry

Nicolò Costa

Sociology of Tourism and Local Development State, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

Email: nicocosta@tiscali.it

Received May 30th, 2012; revised June 30 th, 2012; accepted July 20th, 2012

The sociology of tourism can be considered applied sociology. Therefore, it is necessary to ascertain the

up skills of the sociologist in the process of tourism planning. The present paper refers to the idea of phi-

losophic practitioner as a theoretical model and considers the sociologist as a facilitator of local tourism

development. To this purpose, I discuss some topics and working tools that can be used when the sociolo-

gist is asked to help local stakeholders create significant involvement of the local community. In particu-

lar, I propose some self-assessment tools to be included in a tourism process centred on local participation.

The paper focuses on fundamental questions concerning the techniques of bottom up regulation and the

techniques to facilitate the passage from individualism to collaborative marketing in order to attract visi-

tors suitable to the destination. The discussions are based inductively on tourism economic policies initi-

ated in Italy to create collaboration between local institutions and enterprises aimed at integrating local

resources (accommodation structures, transport, gastronomy, art and archaeology, etc.) and creating dis-

tricts or systems of Made in Italy hospitality. The results indicate the sociologist of tourism as a facilitator

of the collaborative partnership in support of the destination management. Many difficulties in creating

tourism districts or systems are due to the absence of this type of professional figure.

Keywords: Community; Local; Facilitator; Self-Assessment Tools; Local Tourism Development;

Participatory Planning; Made in Italy Hospitality Industry

Aim and Method

The aim of this study is to define the most effective and effi-

cient socio-organizational procedures in the realization and

management of local tourism development based on collabora-

tive marketing (Aas, Ladkin, & Fletcher, 2005; Fyall & Garrod,

2005; Branwell & Lane, 2000; Dredge, 2006a; Naipaul, Wang e

Okumus, 2009) between public projects and private initiatives,

but also between territorial public institutions and between

companies (belonging to the same or different sectors) operat-

ing in Italian tourist incoming. It is argued that the “collabora-

tive communities” provide a useful lens for understanding the

tourism planning between government, tourism producers and

civil society and, as such, have the potential to inform a par-

ticipative destination management policy and practice.

The guidelines or planning procedures are based on the fol-

lowing presupposition: social exchange, composed by trust and

reputation (not very present in hospitality), precedes and facili-

tates the economic exchange among the locals; this allows the

development or territorial marketing plans to be the substance

of the tourism system or district because it is managed by play-

ers who generate and receive trust and reputation.

The development plan, technically well written and a shared

effort, should make use of continuous guidance by the applied

sociologist, an expert in economic and geographical analyses of

destinations. The sociologist works within models of consen-

sual town planning, including Strategic Plans. He is charged by

a Promotion and Management Committee with the task of put-

ting into practice the few or many local skills and energies so

that they can generate creative groups aimed at defining collec-

tive businesses destined to endure in time and at delineating

good practices of a hospitable city with the residents and visi-

tors (Costa, 2008). The applied sociologist as facilitator is a

mediator (a true go-between) between knowledge of the tour-

ism market and innovative activities of the companies that de-

velop collective businesses with local bodies, thus acting as a

meta-manager of development (on the role of mediators of

knowledge in general, cf. Lopez-Cabrales, Perez-Luno, & Valle

Cabrera, 2009; Cooper, 2006). The mediation gives positive

results in terms of facilitation of aggregative processes, of em-

powerment of the human resources present in hospitality, of

guidance of the local players toward the realization of a precise

Network Project (Dredge, 2006a; Dredge, 2006b).

The present study is a methodological contribution aimed at

defining the guidelines of territorial planning centred on the

involvement of the stakeholders in planning and managing

network products. These network products are engineered

around natural and cultural primary resources, which by them-

selves prompt a trip, or around secondary/support resources,

interconnected and improved to form a unique and appealing

attraction (Godfrey & Clarke, 2002; Ritchie & Crouch, 2005),

reconciling promotion and marketing of the supply (Ejarque,

2009). This paper does not teach how to write the Local Tour-

ism Development Plan but how to have the Plan written (learn

to learn) by the local players by sharing knowledge that is im-

plicit or internal to the single organization and explicit or for-

mal knowledge codified in documents and projects.

It demonstrates that the sociologist of local development is

able to increase profits for those who have something to ex-

change so as to merit receiving something in exchange (linked

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business). Therefore, the research is professionalizing and seeks

to demonstrate how a local development sociologist can play

the role of facilitator/empowerer/guide of aggregative proc-

esses (public and private decision-makers) for the planning and

management of a hospitality network for development regulated

via bottom-up consensus. It contributes to the debate on the

skilled worker (Ebit, 2008) and on the competencies of local

tourism development professionals (Costa, 2005; Biork & Vir-

tanen, 2005).

The study method consists in consultation of the Italian so-

cio-economic and territorial literature on tourism and local de-

velopment. The basic theory is that of social exchange as a pre-

supposition favourable to economic exchange and to the prac-

tical realization of territorial planning projects to integrate local

resources. To this end, the perception of the local players, con-

sisting of the assessment of costs and benefits and of a more

general satisfaction with the experience induced by tourism de-

velopment, can be measured to establish the attitude toward one

or more specific hospitality projects (Mason & Cheyne, 2000;

Jones, Jurowski, & Uysal, 2000; Tosun, 2002; Nunkoo & Ram-

kissoon, 2007; Tovar & Lockwood, 2008, for the theory and the

research method).

The international literature is hybridized with the professio-

nal experience of a sociologist-facilitator acquired during the

start-up of Local Tourism Systems (e.g. La Spezia), the inte-

gration of cultural events and territorial marketing (e.g. Festival

of Literature in Mantua, Festival of Ravello with the local tour-

ist consortium and the Foundation of the Festival), Strategic

Plans (e.g. that of Vasto San Salvo in Abruzzo) or Structural

Plans (e.g. at Cetraro in Calabria or Fiano Romano, a town near

Rome, or in the district of Acilia in the Municipality of Rome).

In each of these cases, the participatory planning was guided by

an urban planner, a graduate in architecture (sometimes an ar-

chistar like Vittorio Gregotti in the case of Acilia). The soci-

ologist-facilitator (the author of the present article) used the

self-assessment instruments described in this paper, included

in the Italian debate on Made in Italy tourism districts or sys-

tems.

The New Professional Framework: The Applied

Sociologist of Tourism as Philosophic

Practitioner

The sociology of tourism as applied sociology (Dasgupta &

Driskell, 2007; Steele & Price, 2008) faces a serious limitation:

in Italy, but probably in many developed countries, there are no

university courses with curricula expressly designed to train the

sociologist of tourism and local development by combining

education and practical training. The history of sociology of

tourism in the USA and other English language countries (Nash,

2007; Apostolopoulos, Leivadi, & Yannakis, 1996) and in

France, Germany, Spain, Poland and Italy (Dann & Liebman

Parrinello, 2009) highlights the predominance of macro-theory

over practical methods that could make the sociologist of tour-

ism a professional who could influence the policies of local

institutions and enterprises. Even when the sociologist uses the

case-study method or participatory observation or comparative

or quantitative methods, the empirical analysis leads to theo-

retical results that are little used (or not used at all) by the tour-

ism players. Indeed, in the second chapter of Holden (2005),

dedicated to the sociology of tourism, there is a clear concep-

tual break between the first part presenting some macro-theo-

ries (structuralism, functionalism, conflict theory, phenome-

nology) and the second part describing empirical studies on

tourist behaviour (starting with the socio-cultural impacts of

tourism and the local community): in other words, the empirical

studies are not guided by the theories. In reality, “great narra-

tions” and “great theories” belong to the modernity of the 19th

and 20th centuries. Today the sociologist is an “interpreter of

culture”; having abandoned the conviction of controlling the

social totality, he becomes a consultant who conducts research

to serve civil society and political society with multiple and

variable points of view, applying to his activity the post-mod-

ern paradigm of inter-disciplinarity and the paradigm of prag-

matism aimed at solving problems in what seems the best way

at the time. There is no profound truth and no prophecy about

the future.

In Great Britain, John Tribe (2002, 2009) has delineated the

figure of philosophic practitioner as a theoretical model of the

new tourism player, trained with a mix of professional compe-

tencies and liberal knowledge. This approach is a point of ref-

erence for the present study, even though Tribe includes soci-

ology among the liberal and reflective sciences and not among

those that provide professional and reflective competencies (e.g.

law, economics, marketing). Tribe’s model has sparked a dis-

cussion on interdisciplinary competencies and, above all, on the

hybridization of knowing with know-how, of knowledge with

competencies, in terms of training programs in tourism and

hospitality. The question about the sense of truth, beauty and

virtue in tourism practices is acceptable if one then provides

advice on how to improve erroneous practices, to eliminate ug-

liness or to indicate procedures for a possible good life. If the

discussion is closed within the world of theorists (academics),

the risk (especially for the sociologist) is to lose contact with

the social reality and to raise questions exclusively within the

community of experts, far from the changes occurring outside

of it.

The perspective of the philosophic practitioner, who com-

bines liberal-reflective and vocational-professional knowledge,

is convincing: it can make up for the discrepancy between the-

ory and practice. Therefore, the sociologist of tourism must also

open up to the managerial implications of theories and help

solve practical problems posed by the political and economic

players operating in tourism and hospitality. And this must be

accomplished by working with them and not “above” them

seated on a pile of books scrutinizing tourism events in order to

criticize them (for the limits of critical sociology applied to

tourism, Costa & Martinotti, 2003). If the sociologist of tourism

is a philosophic practitioner, i.e. applies himself to the solution

of problems, he can then teach others “how to” become a philo-

sophic practitioner who works in public institutions or in tour-

ism compani es.

Hence, the present paper is a contribution to the training of

the sociologist as philosophic practitioner who works in close

connection with local development planners and contributes

with up skills to urban, rural and environmental regeneration.

Above all, he is recognized for his abilities as a socio-economic

analyst of resources to be improved and of the impacts of tour-

ism on the local community, and thus as a facilitator of good

practices that generate collaborative partnerships to attract visi-

tors and make them spend t heir money at the destination (Costa,

2005, 2008; Costa & Testa, 2012; Biork & Virtanen, 2005). For

this reason, it is appropriate to describe the up skills of the ana-

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lyst-facilitator of local tourism development or of the post-Ford

hospitality industry, as a specific professional figure of phi-

losophic practitioner.

LTS, CD, TD: Toward an Industry of “Made in

Italy” Hospitality?

The tourism development model was established by Italian

legislation as a Local Tourism System or LTS (art. 5 Law 135/

2001). However, the basic ideas were the same as the one

drawn up by the Tourism District established by the Region of

Sicily based on art. 7 of L. 15 September n. 10 and the Disci-

plinary Regulation (D.A. n. 4 of 16.02.2010) which literally

reproduced its mandate and guiding idea, namely to facilitate

the effectiveness of the economic players at the level of the

supply chain in order to promote and market innovative prod-

ucts (Della Corte, 2009; Sciarelli, 2007; Dall’Ara & Morandi,

2006; Lazzaretti & Petrillo, 2006).

With the promotion of inter-organizational models, the leg-

islation sought to initiate a process in which competition and

cooperation between public institutions and private companies,

alone or in partnership, could alternate so as to move ahead

with product innovations and to attract tourist flows and expen-

ditures to the destination, generating new jobs and growth of

the gross domestic product (for LTS, cf. Dall’Ara & Morandi,

2004; Lazzaretti & Petrillo, 2006; Sciarelli, 2007).

This approach was borrowed from the Made in Italy “Indus-

trial districts”, which were also established by Italian legislation

(law no. 371 of 1991) and subjected to attempts at protection in

terms of certification of the final product and of the Italian

concept of enterprise, with specific values that characterize the

Italian mode of economic development. In fact, the Made in

Italy of industrial districts was publicly praised by President

Clinton during the G7 meeting in 1994.

There is a thread linking the sectorial interdependences of

tourism with the image of Italy in the world. The excellence in

archaeology, art, food and beverages, fashion, interior design,

industrial design, cinema and sport has something in common

with the touristic trip: the productive use of visual culture. The

culture of images and the economy have long been linked; they

are doctrines that are hybridized to generate an added value in

aesthetical terms, a policy and a poetry of taste applied to goods

(Costa, 2009). Why not reproduce their good practices in tour-

ism? There is a current broad political debate on Made in Italy

and the difficulties in protecting it from the unfair competition

of counterfeiters. This internationally successful model should

be defended and strengthened in the era of globalization, exten-

ding its factors of success to other sectors such as tourism but

also to “cultural district s” or CD, which are also planned at the

regional level but with little success (as supported by Sacco &

Tavani Blessi, 2005). In reality, these attempts always make

reference, directly or indirectly, to the input-output of indepen-

dent financing, which guarantees the persistence in time of the

experiential tourism economy and of mobilities (cf. Ciapetti,

2010). Therefore, the CD should be considered sub-types of

tourism districts or TD, and the great contributions of research-

ers to CD should be reproposed as tourism-culture districts

within the renewed LTS or the Sicilian TD, without useless

overlaps and “competing arguments”. Hence, the CD should be

included in a broader territorial marketing program centred on

the knowledge and satisfaction of customers subdivided by trip

variables (residents, day-trippers, tourists, business persons) or

by socio-demographic lifestyles and spending capabilities (youths

on school trips, elderly people with a lot of free time, traditional

middle-class families). The improvement of resources with per-

sonalized services based on the target is the approach that also

involves CD, which work if the demands of cultural tourists are

satisfied.

However, there is a formal public awareness that Italian eco-

nomic development, freed from top-down directives and orders

but supported by targeted provisions, is based on competition

for the improvement of performances already present in the

minds of the local operators. There are vital energies available

locally for self-coordination within territorial and cognitive in-

frastructures guided by national policy, an effective economic

policy of Made in Italy hospitality that replicates the successes

of the industrial districts, now considered a tradition of the Ita-

lian path to modernization within the international division of

labour.

In short, LTS, TD and, I would add, CD are variants of a

hospitality industry—all to be planned and managed—which

plays an active role in attracting the “gaze” (Urry, 1990) of cus-

tomers by combining the creativeness of operators in sectorial

interdependences among culture, economy, society, territory,

environment, cultural resources, transportation and tourism.

The organizational receptacle—be it LTS or DT—is defined by

the actions agreed upon among the players involved in the bot-

tom-up development. In fact, tourism districts, theoretically

continuous with Made in Italy industrial districts (Costa, 2009),

are characteristic because the collective actions, generated by

territorial proximity, maximize the genius loci and local tradi-

tions and sell products effectively sought and chosen by the

segments of tourist demand, increasing their sales (measured by

cash flows). LTS, TD and CD can be understood as contribu-

tions or experiments that converge toward a Made in Italy hos-

pitality industry, given certain conditions and procedures of in-

tegration of resources and players. Therefore, if Made in Italy

enterprises play an important operational role (from design of

the hotels to organization of events to prolong the tourism sea-

son), then we can hypothesize a Made in Italy hospitality dis-

trict, defined by local specificities. Yet, this has not occurred

thus far and is merely a research and planning hypothesis. Ther e

are no good practices to be studied with benchmarking.

The principal differences between industrial districts and

tourism districts are that the hospitality players sell experiences

and relationships (people move, not goods), that the place of

production (goods and services of incoming) and the place of

consumption coincide, and that the industrial district arises

from the autonomy of civil society while the TD must have

public leadership because many environmental and cultural re-

sources are assets of administrations and must remain so (Costa,

2009). While a clothing company can stock its goods and have

sales, a hotel manager seeks to sell accommodation. If unsold,

it cannot be stocked because he produces and markets services

related to the time spent, to the immateriality expressed by a

room or a meal. In this context, the collective logics of tourism

operators require territorial and experiential marketing different

from industrial marketing aimed at selling the greatest quantity

of goods in a market assumed to be in continuous growth. In

tourism, relationships are marketed because the tourist, satisfied

with the service, can increase the reputation of the structure and

the number of its customers by means of advice to relatives and

friends, positively influencing their decision-making processes

(word-of-mouth marketing). Manufacturing sells goods, tour-

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ism sells relationships centred on the planned and perceived

quality of services.

The mix of public and private services characterizes the mar-

keting management of the tourism destination. Collaborative

partnerships arise from effective exchanges among local talents

(Fyall & Garrod, 2005, Watkins & Bell, 2003). These connec-

tive intelligences of the network (Dredge, 2006a), although be-

longing to different sectors (from agriculture to culture, from

transport to hospitality, from food and beverages to events),

converge toward a hospitality model that renders unique and

high-quality the experiential products, which can be acquired

only in the tourism district. If this convergence on the improve-

ment of services and the shared realization of network products

due to both geographical proximity and collaborative desires is

realized, we can speak of “Made in Syracuse” or “Made in

Assisi” TD because the local scale reinforces the national im-

age, understood as a melting pot of diversity.

Understanding “how to do” bottom-up collaboration to gen-

erate successful innovations means initiating the first phase,

namely the Promotion and Management Committee of a Net-

work Project, whatever might be its denomination. This step

forward is carried out in the (ideal and regulatory) perspective

of the hospitality industry, in the inclusion of talents belonging

to a broader local economy than the “restricted” tourism indus-

try.

Several phases are proposed so that the Made in Italy hospi-

tality network can be initiated following an appropriate meth-

odology. Indeed, as an old proverb states, “well begun is half

done”. In the more formal language of territorial planning, it

can be said that we can interpret the fate of the process of pro-

duct integration and bottom-up participation from the DNA of

the Promotion Committee of a strategic or structural plan of the

hospitable city, of a network of restaurants and typical ag-

ricultural products, of a tourism-culture district or of a local

tourism system. The modalities by which the Promotion Com-

mittee involves the players to “put them to work”, together with

the reputation of and trust in the local talents asked to exchange

information and services, contribute to the collective ability to

generate pro-tourism social and intellectual capital, with a focus

on the satisfaction of the resident population, the satisfaction of

the local hospitality and transport entrepreneurs and workers,

but especially the satisfaction of the types of tourists to be at-

tracted and entertained by improvement and diversification of

the local offer.

Neo-Community and Cosmopolitan

Self-Assessment of the Destination

Communicative Ra tionality, General Strategy and

Strategic Projects

In the diagnosis of the destination, the Promotion Committee,

helped by a facilitator, initiates thinking on guidelines or points

of no return during introductory forums. The concepts of strat-

egy, collaborative marketing, network and system, glocalism

are defined because the local élite, which started the process,

believes in communicative rationality: access to information

develops competencies and reduces asymmetries among those

who wish to exchange learning to initiate profitable business re-

lationships (the most horizontal ones possible) (Dredge, 2006a;

Dredge, 2006b). Different people interpret networks differently

and their flexibility should be viewed as an advantage in “fa-

ciliating” understanding of the political complexities of col-

laborative planning (Dredge, 2006a: p. 579).

The local élite is part of the initiation of the hospitality in-

dustry network but knows that the final choices also involve the

exclusion of those who do not change with change, who do not

have specific skills or services to be improved, because not

everybody can exchange with everybody but many with many

(many-to-many relationship) in defining the strategic or struc-

tural or territorial marketing plan. The presentation of these

strategic ideas begins to delineate a strategic vision, induced by

the local élite.

The sociologist/facilitator poses the problem of eliciting the

management knowledge of the locals: he knows the methods by

which to transmit the knowledge accumulated from education

or experience at the moment it is actually used in the hospitality

industry (Turkson & Riley, 2008). He knows how to define the

importance of the process of self-assessment of the strategic

plan so that when he first introduces the public forum with a

talk the local élite immediately understands that the applied

knowledge of the facilitator comes from experience, from his

direct commitment in the Made in Italy hospitality industry.

The sociologist/facilitator contemporaneously appears as an

academic with formal knowledge encoded in books and articles

he has written on local tourist development and as a partner

who knows the real problems of the entrepreneurs, the workers

and the public administrators. He wants to help them in a

friendly way to bring out their hidden knowledge, the knowl-

edge learned with experience and made available in the public

forum. The forum is a working group in which the situation is

not that of someone who teaches and others who are taught; all

the stakeholders participate in a learning community that will

develop self-assessment instruments to program the tourism

from the point of view of the local community (Reid, Mair, &

George, 2004).

Clarifying certain guiding ideas at the beginning of the proc-

ess is useful so as not to find them unresolved when the process

is well on its way to a necessarily defective operation, with con-

sequent costs (vetoes, disagreements, withdrawals, etc.) to re-

pair the breakdowns of the system or network or district during

the course of the work. Nevertheless, the proposed strategy sen-

sitizes but does not convince, does not guarantee that people,

even if convinced, will begin to work in a group and will auto-

matically generate combined actions. Therefore, in addition to

the “exposition” of ideas, it initiates a change of perspective.

People listen but do not change their behaviour because of that;

communicative rationality generally orientates people but does

not per se prompt them to act and to change their behaviour.

In the introductory forum, the Promotion Committee, via the

self-assessment, encourages the locals to look with an “out-

sider’s” eyes at the local resources and eventual projects for en-

hancement of the immaterial and material patrimony. In this

way, it simply seeks to know the pre-conditions and socio-

territorial motivations to which is added inter-organizational

innovation aimed at guiding local tourist development. It veri-

fies the departure level following the introduction of the new

guiding ideas. This and nothing more. And it often receives

confirmation of the “limits” to participation more than positive

surprises about the departure levels.

In reality, during the initial public forums and in the topical

focus groups, the locals are not able to assess a strategy, con-

sisting of so many numbers and so many idea s: the pe ople oft en

have cultural “limits” or little experience in discussions of pro-

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activity and of a general vision based on the evaluation of im-

pacts at the level of sectorial inter-dependences, external dis-

economies and long time periods (Tosun, 2002). Instead, they

are able to think about precise initiatives; they activate their in-

ductive thinking and then, guided by the facilitator, develop

proactivity and vision. Therefore, the initial phase mainly in-

volves the assessment of hypotheses of strategic projects in

order to establish whether to create a territorial network or not,

based on the costs and benefits but certainly also on more gen-

eral values like the collective well-being and the sustainability

of the projects. Hence, it is more effective to present strategic

projects rather than to merely play the top-down educational

role in explaining what is a territorial strategic plan or a territo-

rial tourism marketing strategy. We are dealing with under-

standing how to encourage, initiate and manage the self-think-

ing ability of the residents concerning the advantages of colla-

boration. We are dealing with modelling the community’s sup-

port of a project, included in a very loose strategic vision which

combines the local resources to increase the attraction of the

interconnected places, balancing the satisfaction of the residents,

the workers and the tourists (Nunkoo & Ramkissoon, 2010).

The very fact that the strategic project involves people who

did not know each other prior to the public forum (e.g. the

owners of second and third houses who live in the place part-

time, along with incoming tour operators or the creative direc-

tors of the local museums or the local environmental associa-

tions) is a good beginning to recognize a limit to participation:

the physical co-presence and the dialogue between bearers of

different visions and interests is already an improvement in

interpersonal relationships. This creates a social capital favour-

able to the hospitable city (Costa, 2008); at the very least, it en-

courages involvement in the neo-community formed by locals

and open to the current visitors and it generates dialogue (Reid,

Mair, & George, 2004).

Strategic Proj ects o n Inf ormation Flow s and Spatial

Mobilities

Since local communities are not very aware of the new soci-

ety of information flows and new spatial mobilities (Adey, 2010;

Urry, 2007; Sheller & Urry, 2004), there is the matter of em-

powering the locals so that they perceive the benefits and costs

of projects of realignment to the new experiential economy, to

the post-modern hospitality industry. Therefore, it is necessary

to convince them of the advantages of the change of cognitive

paradigm and strategic perspectives by means of one or more

general projects centred on information flows and spatial mo-

bilities in order to remove any resistance to opening up to the

communicational and interpersonal interconnections with out-

siders put in motion by contemporary society.

A first guiding idea is the following: argue convincingly that

there is a positive correlation between the satisfaction of resi-

dents with the services currently used and the acceptance of

services used by “outsiders”. This guiding idea can be used to

generate the conviction that planning centred on the visitors can

produce benefits for the residents. This implies a change of per-

spective in urban and territorial planning, passing from immo-

bility to mobility. Passing from the image of the immobile soci-

ety to the local society as a node of a dynamic network, a local

society that can be regenerated merely by mobilities, is a dif-

ferent way in which administrators and many residents begin to

see themselves, starting with the personal story of whomever

has been rooted in the territory for a long time. And this is

problematic. The shift of focus is already a problem for whom-

ever is dissatisfied with his residential life and looks askance at

the idea that the administrators should think about the “others”

and not about those who have been there for a long time and

pay their taxes. In many cases, the tourism impact in the high

season brings about increased costs of consumer goods (e.g.

fresh fish and other foodstuffs) also for the residents; moreover,

tourist resorts, such as vacation villages, may tend to be self-

referential, with few job opportunities for the locals. In these

cases, the perception of the tourism impact is not positive and

there are legitimate doubts about the opportuneness of planning

the hospitable city, let alone if we add the Made in Italy tag

which the destination reinforces and characterizes.

In parallel, the passage from localism to cosmopolitanism is

not something that is realized with communicative rationality

and moral suasion by presumed “enlightened” people toward

“closed-minded” masses. It activates the context of socially di-

ffuse resistances in which advantages are lost, such as the “po-

sitional gains” of those who are not competent in managing the

innovations and are content that things remain as they are be-

cause they are elderly and not very proactive or because they

are convinced that the art of making do will save them no mat-

ter what happens. If not adequately guided, the passage acti-

vates resistances that limit participation.

In large multifunctional cities and in small rural towns, in

northern and southern Italy, the passage to management of spa-

tial mobilities as a focus of urban and territorial planning places

in doubt the centrality of the immobile people who wish to re-

main so because they are mistrustful of outsiders and orientated

toward shared mistrust (e.g. they are suspicious of the oppor-

tuneness of collaborative partnerships because the players have

always operated in an individualistic manner and they think that

this is the one best way, the only way to operate, and that the

model of working groups and network is only an abstract ideal).

From Villa Adriana in the province of Rome to Noto in the pro-

vince of Syracuse, most residents, even including some public

administrators, prefer to live in “modern” houses which they

have built illegally, and they still cannot understand why

UNESCO (UNESCO, what’s that?) has defined those places as

“World Heritage Sites”. They fail to see them as a personal pa-

trimony: many people think that the “real” problems are differ-

ent and that those “ruins” and “old buildings” are extraneous to

their needs. Tradition as a heritage connecting the local to the

global is seen only as an “idea” imposed from above; often the

behaviours of the locals demonstrate that they do not feel tied

to tourist mobilities as a vehicle of a trend toward cosmopolita-

nism, which also involves them in modify ing attitudes and endo-

genous relationships within the local community and thus final-

ly the urban policies, shifting the attention to flows and mobili-

ties.

Neo-Community and Relational Diagnosis

The preliminary diagnosis or self-assessment is neo-com-

munitarian and relational (Murphy, 1985; Guidicini & Savelli,

1999; Savelli, 2008; Pearce, Moscardo, & Ross, 1996; Mos-

cardo, 2008; Nunkoo & Ramkissoon, 2010) because it involves

various segments of the local population to re-invent the local

community toward hospitality (a neo-community composed of

locals and visitors) and because it develops specialized ex-

changes and professional competencies in managing the net-

N. COSTA

work model of the destination as a collective company that puts

to work sectors which up to then had been weakly connected or

separated (system). The diagnosis is useful because it reduces

the risks of having to turn back in the planning of an experien-

tial tourism product to rediscover, but too late, the good reasons

of a “true” collaboration between public and private, a collabo-

ration that was not undertaken because it had been decided to

proceed by a shortcut or to ignore some strategic problems,

pretending that nothing untoward would have happe n ed.

In reality, we know how things will end already in the initial

phase. The pre-conditions and motivations of the local popula-

tion and stakeholders of “expanded tourism” are, as mentioned

above, the genetic material, the DNA, that gives rise to the in-

novative creative group; this group will become united and in-

ternational if this evolution is inscribed in the socio-political

and cultural heritage of the proponents from the start. Either it

exists (and it needs to be enhanced for the growth of the hospi-

table community) or it does not (and it needs to be grafted on

via the hybridization of knowledge). Otherwise, as often hap-

pens, if the knowledge and skills at the beginning are mediocre

—for instance, the localists predominate over the cosmopoli-

tans—the project to enhance the experiential tourism products

will also be mediocre and the groups will be constituted with-

out drawing along the associated players, connected in an inter-

mittent but constant and fluid manner to the network being con-

stituted from “the bottom up”.

Self-Assessment Phases

A Sociological Approach to the Destination

Marketing

Unfortunately, only some English language manuals specify

that the governance of the district/system/network and the De-

velopment Plan should involve an approach in which participa-

tion is an integral part and considered a necessary activity that

encourages the talents of the civil society. The liberal approach

is more complex in Italy than in countries with an Anglo-Saxon

juridical (and also general) culture because the civil society is

very weak and politicians must also play the proactive role,

currently little practised, of meta-manager of local tourism de-

velopment, developing specific competencies. Nevertheless, I

have had the manual by Godfrey and Clarke (2002) translated,

while Steven Pike wrote an excellent manual, still in English,

on how to practise destination marketing (2008). Instead, the

manual by Ejarque (2009), an introductory tool to territorial

marketing, like so many other texts (Pechlaner & Weiermar,

2000) completely lacks national and international bibliographi-

cal references on the essential problems of how to make things

happen and how the marketing plan of the destination is effec-

tively applied and not consigned to a drawer, wasting time and

money.

To avoid this and to overcome the limits of marketing for-

mulas which seem practical but then nothing happens, the (ap-

parently more theoretical) phases of the self-assessment leave

more lasting traces. In fact, they put the people to work without

the pretension of explaining with the manual the one best way,

the (apparently) definitive solution for all the problems. The

llan compiled by an expert is not the solution to the local prob-

lems; instead, the one written by locals with expert guidance is

a good start to resolve such problems according to freely chosen

and interpreted methods because they are based on rules and

commitments undertaken during the self-assessment process.

How can the first phase be managed to begin a network sys-

tem for the enhancement of the immaterial and material patri-

mony, defined in brief as community self-assessment? It con-

sists of the following steps, which must follow a chronological

order and must not become entangled.

First Step: Self-Assessment of the Positive and

Negative Impacts of the Tourism Flows on the

Environment, the Economy and the Local Culture

In the forum, the sociologist-facilitator links the assessments

to the governance of the variables via a structured organiza-

tional system such as a network territorial organization. The so-

lution to the problems and the maximization of the advantages

depend on the regulatory-systemic approach, which seems to be

the optimal solution to resolve collective problems and to sell a

destination as a unitary product recognizable by the targets to

be knowingly and selectively attracted and welcomed. It serves

to make people think in a general, not particularistic, manner

about the destination area as a potential collective player, en-

couraging the formation of creative groups. From this point of

view, a conference on “sustainable development” is more than

sufficient to define a debate which, initiated in the early 1980s,

is now present in the general economic (and not only tourism)

policies of the UNO, European Union and many inter-govern-

mental accords, also on a regional scale. The guiding idea is

that rules can avoid the negative impacts of mass tourism and

that there are macro- and micro-techniques which can success-

fully manage the tourism flows, with long-term benefits for the

local populations, for the incoming enterprises and for the well-

being of the hospitality workers.

The sociologist-facilitator uses Table 1 to demonstrate that

“anti-tourism apocalypticists” are exaggerating and that laxity

destroys destinations. It is all a question of rules that operate

between public interest and bottom-up development centred on

the enterprises (Costa & Martinotti, 2003). We begin from be-

low left, when there is low regulation at the destination because

the flows are also low. Occasional alternative tourism (OAT) is

the virgin destination where few tourists arrive. But it is no lon-

ger true that we pass obligatorily to unsustainable mass tourism

(UMT), typical of high-season destinations dominated by de-

mand, which are crowded, unliveable and unbearable. The rules

of sustainability have also given rise to planned alternative tou-

rism (PAT), disciplining the flows with macro- and micro-

techniques of territorial management, making them compatible

with the environment: the establishment of national and regio-

nal natural oases and parks belongs to PAT. Yet, even mass

destinations have introduced rules of eco-management with the

mark of ecological quality to limit the negative effects of the

masses, with the consequent realization of sustainable mass

tourism (SMT). SMT is also governed by the de-seasonaliza-

tion of flows. This model rejects the pessimistic view of the ne-

cessary decline of resorts because the sustainable tourism indu-

stry can reconcile protection of resources and their enhance-

ment for aware and responsible tourists, post-mass. The depen-

dent variable is given by the rules the local players are able to

produce and enforce in order to conserve the natural and cul-

tural resources for future generations.

Therefore, sustainable tourism does not represent the usual

frontier of environmentalism but an opportunity to enhance and

exploit the local resources of Italy, the functional integration

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Table 1.

Local community and regula t io n.

Note: Source: C osta (2005) and Weaver (2000).

between Italy’s historical and cultural heritage, its natural parks,

agricultural sites, excellent industrial and handicraft activities.

Increasingly, sustainable tourism constitutes a new code of eth-

ics of travel know-how, a lifestyle that permeates the evolution

of the entire sector, which characterizes the methods of use of

the tourism product, connecting the typicality of the products to

the development of the local offer systems. In parallel, it directs

public and private investments toward the environmental qual-

ity of the territory and toward the eco-management of the tour-

ism structures, which is obtained via the diffusion of informa-

tion and the training of tourism workers. In particular, giving a

central place to the network organization of the offer, it requires

that the stakeholders, beginning with the entrepreneurs and the

workers, know how to “harmonize” the solutions accompany-

ing the innovation driven by ideas and by reflection induced by

sustainable tourism as a thoughtful conscience of globalization.

The acceptance of this perspective, via the transfer of “for-

mal” knowledge to the “informal” knowledge of the public and

private local tourism players, is the condition able to reconcile

the territorial marketing with the guiding ideas of sustainable

tourism. In fact, Ritchie and Crouch (2005) wrote a manual on

how to manage the competitive destination according to the

sustainable tourism perspective. More in general, the theory of

regulation of tourism flows should be applied to the tourism

districts or systems of Made in Italy hospitality. Accordingly,

the territorial marketing plan is aimed at modelling the destina-

tions from UMT toward SMT exactly because the environmen-

tal and socio-cultural context constitutes the receptacle of the

new contents or the new tourist products, realized “among” and

“by means of” the sectors of excellence: gastronomy, art and

archaeology, fashion, etc.

Second Step: Self-Assessment of the Preconditions

and Motivations That Induce the Local Players to

Make Pacts or Alliances, to Create Collaborative

Partnerships

The community self-assessment is conducted via the socio-

territorial diagnosis of the behaviours assumed by the local

players in response to the strategy of operating in a systemic

manner to generate the products of the hospitable city with the

residents and visitors. It serves to induce the emergence of the

interests in play and to enhance leadership and coordination.

During a public forum, the expert-facilitator seeks to make

the local stakeholders reflect on the difference between the

top-down model and bottom-up model, orienting the debate so

as to prevent abrupt and useless contrasts between the two. For

this purpose, he can make use of Table 2.

The second model is more suitable for the network business

model, but this is not an act of faith: the learning community

(the sociological framework of the knowledge management)

discusses the topics proposed by the table, trying to adapt the

discussions to the local case, to its specificity. In fact, no desti-

nation is equal to another nor must it undertake to become so,

exactly because the local groups are called on to interpret the

orientation schemes and to produce original solutions, specific

to the places interconnected by services.

The sociologist-facilitator describes the table, clarifying the

concepts by means of comparison between the top-down model

and the bottom-up model, item by item. Indeed, the advantage

consists in the fact that the table constitutes an orientation com-

pass to decide, in general, what can be the advantages of a bot-

tom-up self-organization which is also institutionally covered

and legitimized from the top, such as national and regional laws

aimed at encouraging and regulating tourism development with

network models. Within the self-assessment of the precondi-

tions, a question is raised that is less institutional and more re-

lated to the forms of participation in collaborative marketing

that innovates already cons olidated business practices.

The improvement process that the self-assessment triggers

can be described wit h Table 3 , modified from Watkins and Bell

(2003). Naturally, the objective of the network model is tourism

development, measurable in the course of the years, and not

that of collusive collaboration aimed at access to regional pub-

lic resources, which are thought of as the greasy pole, in which

what counts is to do a lot of elbowing and gain access to public

monies so as then to distribute them to clients. In the latter case,

Table 2.

From Governance model to Participation-consensus model.

 From: Lar ge project, with

predefined funding

 To: Smaller project , open to

progressive bottom-up

development

 From: Institutional

leadership

 To: Local operational

leadership by entrepreneurs

 From: Top- down plann ing  To: Shared vision, but locally

defined plans

 From: Proactive public

authority

 To: Proactive public

authority, but at the serv i ce

of the local community

 From: LTS sufficient to

initiate the pr ocess

 To: LTS requiring

professional operat ional

competencies

 From: Top- down

decision-making process

 To: Local operational

decision-making process, in

small irreversible steps

 From: High organizational

and instituti onal costs,

financed

 To: Only operational costs,

with local parti cipation

 From: Sectorial hypotheses

and competent public

authorities

 To: Sectorial hypotheses and

non-competent public

authorities

ote: Source: autonom o us elaboration.

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Table 3.

From competitive fragmentation to collusive (and th e n in n o v a ti v e ) c o l l a boration.

Types of experiences

Dimensions Fragmented competition Cooperation Collusive collaboration

Time Immediate, often in response to actions

of competitors

Short- to medium-term, often in response

to projects initiated by the hospitality

industry

Long-term, often in response to existing

agreements

Trust Minimal, t h ere is no trust in other

businessmen of the sector Low to medium, toward the main

organizer and collaborative players

High among the closest members, the

others devel op it in relati on to the results

and if they a dapt themselves

Involvement Mainly self-oriented Generally low, relatively easy to obtain Medium to hi g h, obtained with “use ful”

but not necessarily “true ” results

Goals Short-term, directly lin k ed to the

financial performances and easily

measured

Medium-term, linked to the stimulus for

the business but not re a dily me as ure d

Long-term, linked to t he opportunity to

consolidate the business and not easily

measured

Beneficiaries Gains mainly limited to the

organization Gains for the members of the

organiza t ion and ofte n fo r the region Gains for the me mbers of the

organiza t io n and for th e region

Decision-making

process Individual, limited to the r esults The decisi ons are made by “strong”

individuals or by sm all groups which

convince the others to f ollow them

The market shares are orientated by

consensus

Note: Source: Watkins and Bell, 2003 (modifie d by the author).

the present study is perfectly useless and the reader is invited to

look elsewhere, since the strategic objective is to favour col-

laborative partnerships for the competitive innovation of net-

work products which produce a “leap forward” of the destina-

tion as a collective company based on loose, specialized, crea-

tive exchanges and concretely measurable productive actions.

Nevertheless, the presentation of Table 3 allows us to reflect on

the fact that innovation through collaboration must still be writ-

ten; it is the vertical column that does not yet exist. And to con-

struct a new modus operandi we have the network institutional

organism to be planned as a tool of governance of change.

The facilitator of the aggregative processes, on behalf of the

Promotion and Management Committee of the network organi-

zation, describes the contents and variables that accompany the

process of change from head-to-head competitive fragmentation

to collusive collaboration guided by leaderships oriented to-

ward the control of resources, and then on to the invention of

good practices in which are dictated the rules, rather loose but

generated in an aware and responsible manner, concerning the

strategic and operational guidelines of innovation born from

many-to-many collaborative marketing.

Fourth Step: Sel f-As sess ment of Whom We Wan t to

Invite. The International Middle Class?

It has already been mentioned that not all types of tourists are

suitable to the destination and it is necessary to proceed in a se-

lective manner to avoid territorial incompatibility with various

users. In general, those to be selected as targets are those in a

growth phase. If the objective is cultural tourism, the sociolo-

gist-facilitator will demonstrate that the resources of the mate-

rial and immaterial heritage are highly appreciated by the new

international middle class, self-confident consumers accustom-

ed to purchasing services on-line, to dealing with the risks of

trips, to carrying out sporting and cultural activities at the des-

tination (Costa, 2008; Gretzel & Jamal, 2009; Valencia &

Crouch, 2008). If this is the choice, the arrivals and presences at

the destination do not count, the tourist expenses count. In this

case, we want well-off professi onals. We do not want the masses,

we want cultured, sophisticated, elegant people able to assess

and appreciate re-invented tradition, the tradition that comes

after the tradition, which the stakeholders have begun to pur-

posely build in the preceding phases of bottom-up planning le-

gitimized from the top by regional directives.

Reducing mass tourists and inviting tourists of the high-value

tertiary sector is a strategic choice in tune with the general

changes of contemporary capitalism. We are dealing with in-

creasing the flows already present at the destination: advertising

agents, information technologists, designers, international lawy-

ers, entertainment people, biotechnologists, doctors, etc., com-

ing from all over the world. Indeed, the immaterial heritage

events are co-produced by professionals who want to re-invent

a tradition they feel is their own, their chosen one, because they

have bought or rented a house. They are the medium of re-in-

vented authenticity. They should be welcomed inside a creative,

innovative neo-community, which considers worth and talent a

source of pride and a lifestyle, realigning the quality of the offer

with the expectations of the professionals placed at the centre of

the process of improving the offer.

How do the players of the post-industrial society, of the high-

value tertiary sector dominated by workers who make scien-

tific/cultural knowledge a distinctive resource, spend their free

time and tourism? The new middle class has been defined as

“city users” (Martinotti, 1993) to underline the distinctive char-

acteristic of mobility “among” cities, expressed mainly by mo-

bile people who mostly live in a post-industrial city, carrying

out creative activities (Florida, 2002). The middle class tourist

types are nothing but a part of consumers who use the city to

exploit its recreational and cultural aspects, incorporated in a

unique lifestyle (this is the case of metropolitan businessmen

who travel for business, frantically taking part in work meetings

or specialized fairs). Who are we talking about? In the early

1990s, a new international middle class was identified, differ-

ent from mass tourism on the organizational, motivational, vo-

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cational, behavioural levels and with a capacity for medium-

high expenditure, especially for the acquisition of cultural good s.

It is characterized by:

1) “professionalism” in travel know-how (congress and

business tourism, frequent flyers, low-cost consumers, short

breaks, etc.): the players travel in a desynchronized manner

because they are self-employed or because, if employees, their

collective contracts have favoured very short weeks and they

opt for long “weekends” and reduce the period of the “main

vacation”. They do not like the “single mouthful” trip but that

of “many morsels”. They do not have to adjust to the tourism

services, the services must be flexible enough to be chosen se-

parately and recombined to adapt to the subjectivity of the tour-

ists/travel know-how professionals. They are characterized by

intermittent connections;

2) “intellectualization” (search for active roles in order to

learn with the five senses, polysensoriality): learning is con-

nected to “play” for which the tourist trip continues the poly-

sensorial “pleasure” of expanding the exploratory instinct, alter-

nating many activities, from sport to spiritual experiences (su-

permarket of the “sacred”, gleaning a bit of Buddhism, which is

particularly liked, and yoga practices, intermixed with diets

promising to “put you in good shape”) or experimentation with

local foods with solitary walks or bicycle trips. The travellers

become interpreters of the local cultures which they love to

re-invent and relive;

3) “cosmopolitanism” (mental opening to all types of social

and cultural differences and appreciation of biodiversity, fol-

lowing the influence of the values of sustainable tourism). In

particular, themes of sustainability have influenced the urban

and territorial policies of tourism; thus, the introduced rules are

part of the new lifestyle of the international middle class, which

appreciates the local players if they regulate environmental im-

pacts because it seeks to respect them (code of ethics of aware

or responsible travel know-how, with respect to the plurality of

cultures to be preserved for future generations of tourists).

The collective subject of the middle class is recognizable on

the basis of tourist consumption. It is not a pressure or interest

group. It does not act, like unionized workers, with a collective

logic to exert organized pressure, such as the acquisition of paid

vacations or reduction of the hours worked. It is misleading to

label it politically. The international middle class of city users

is the consequence of complex economic and socio-cultural dy-

namics which delineate the trend toward a tourist lifestyle, de-

fined by many as post-mass tourism analogous to post-indus-

trial or post-modern. It is the tip of a “long-term” socio-cultural

iceberg.

Stebbins (2007) defined this segment as serious leisure,

which is the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist or vol-

unteer core activity. The travellers find this activity so substan-

tial, interesting and fulfilling that, in the typical case, they

launch themselves into a (tourism) career centred on acquiring

and expressing special skills, knowledge and experience. Seri-

ous leisure has been typically contrasted with “casual” or “un-

serious” leisure, which is considerably less substantial and does

not offer the kind of career just described. A quality distin-

guishing serious tourists is the opportunity to follow a (tourism)

career in the endeavour, a career shaped by its own special

contingencies, turning points and stages of achievement and

involvement. The participants in serious leisure make a signifi-

cant effort and play an active role using their specially acquired

knowledge, training or skill in sport, culture, gastronomy, etc.

(Stebbins, 2007, 2012).

In our society, the clear opposition between “strain” of work

(full of content but disliked on account of the assembly line

rhythms and hierarchical organization) and “escape” (“vaca-

tion” of content, characterized by liberated fun, by “doing

sweet nothing” or by a lethargic lifestyle during the main vaca-

tions spent at the sea) is being eroded. The lifestyles of the

“new” social groups highlight clusters different from those of

mass tourism. There is no longer the trip as “doing sweet noth-

ing”, centred on escape and recreational components, for which

the “vacation” is empty of values because it must compensate a

repetitive job via the dream of fantastic experiences centred on

the “good life”, imitating the high consumption of aristocrats.

Instead, we are dealing with “minds full of ideas” that wish to

remain so throughout the year. These are people who are seek-

ing relationships between work and tourism. The trip of any

type is considered a contribution to the enrichment of one’s per-

sonality and job; it is no longer “something other” than work,

but is done with pleasure because it is related to innovation,

creativeness and self-realization.

The tourist demand expressed by the new middle class is in-

creasingly multi-motivated, and flexible, desynchronized, per-

sonalized, interactive/relational, friendly. It has formed during

the last 20 - 25 years and is growing to the point that it is a true

“creative class” which uses its free time in an active way to

reconcile play and work, aesthetics and productivity. And the

“mobility” among cities is typical of creative people: they do

not aspire to work in t he same city for thei r whole lif e but “take

flight” to various cities interested in becoming hospitable in

order to welcome them as best possible because their presence

enriches the economy and the culture of the cities in which they

operate for a certain period of years. The use of their “knowl-

edge” is the most important productive factor to achieve suc-

cess, just as once the raw materials and the “material” energy

sources were essential for the industrial society to make prod-

ucts of mass consumption. In Italy, the new international mid-

dle class is present in the Cinque Terre area, in the Monferrato

area, in Chiantishire, at Ravello, in the Trastevere district in

Rome, in some areas of Sicily, and in few other areas because it

increasingly prefers countries other than Italy.

To host this class, purposely selecting it with collaborative

marketing, the facilitator of the collaborative processes seeks to

make the players think about where to position the innovative

project in relation to endogenous social cohesion and interna-

tionalization by means of awareness and subsequent sale of

tourism goods and services for the new international middle

class. It is not the visitors who must adapt to the destination but

the destination operators who must adapt to the visitors in order

to satisfy them by improving the offer. Table 4, based on the

geographical approach of Dematteis and Governa (2005) with

modifications, can be used for this purpose.

The players invited to the introductory forum reflect on

“where” they think the TD should be positioned in the realiza-

tion phase. Most of them will probably place it in the lower

quadrants, between “fragmented self-centred” and “fragmented

open”. The model has the advantage of stimulating dynamism

and inducing the participants to think about what to do to en-

hance endogenous cohesion and improve the cosmopolitan

skills to attract the professional middle class. In substance, it

visualizes the course to take to reach the “ideal” destination of

the open and integrated TD, the above right quadrant. The table

invites the local communities and the inter-communities to

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Table 4.

The TD according to the intensity of collaboration and internationaliza-

tion.

United self-centred TD Integrated open TD

High intensity

Endogenous

relations

Low intensity

Fragmented

self-centred TD Fragmented open TD

Low intensity High intensity

Supramunicipal relations

Note: Source: Autonomous elaboration based on De Matteis and Governa

(2005).

operate with loose and fiduciary, specialized and creative ex-

changes, as if they were a Made in Italy hospitality district

combining civic pride and ambitions of well-being because they

want to be protagonists in the new economy of networks and

experiential capitalism.

The reflection on expansive glocalism, with the corollary that

cultural goods are not sufficient but that services modelled on

the expectations of the international middle class are needed,

will reduce the risks of creating the usual dichotomy between

promotion of the image and marketing of the goods and ser-

vices. We know that the promotional mix is aimed at the sale of

products designed to satisfy a precise target, whose presence

excludes targets with different lifestyles.

Consequences: TPD (Tourism Policy Document)

After this work of bottom-up planning, the level of agree-

ment among the various players, small and large, public and

private entities, is formalized in a Tourism Policy Document

(TPD). The TPD is written in a loose manner, along general

lines, because it delineates a policy of marketing management

of the destination area based on the material and immaterial

heritage of the resources (Godfrey & Clarke, 2002, for how the

Document is written; Granovetter, 1998, for the concept of

strength of weak ties, which correspond to the loose ones, to

mark the specialized and non-oppressive aspects such as those

of closed communities).

The TPD serves exclusively to reach the objectives of inclu-

sivity of the players with distinct skills and goods/services

which can effectively exchange within the territorial and com-

municative network being constructed. In other words, it is

written in such a way that the greatest possible number of local

players can be recognized. It serves as a basis because the pub-

lic institutions and companies, single or in partnership, can

decide on their participation in the network inter-organizational

model or in the strategic plan of tourist utilization of the net-

work experiential products which the same players, with pre-

cise timing, undertake to realize. These are final products due to

the innovative collaboration (endogenous cohesion) to directly

or indirectly connect the destination, alternating the short net-

works with the long ones, to the clusters of demand to be de-

termined in detail in a subsequent development plan. However,

the TPD is binding on some points (for instance, it is also

shared by private players and only those who give something

can receive something in exchange) to ensure that the opera-

tional meetings not become mere rituals to attract financial re-

sources.

Therefore, unlike Trigilia (2005), Piselli and Ramella (2008)

and Ciapetti (2010), I believe that it is not the “decisionist illu-

sion” to underestimate the need of greater collaboration in the

different phases of the decision-making process among the va-

rious public and private players in initiating innovation, but ra-

ther the underestimation of ungoverned fragmentation, as un-

derlined by the cited model of Watkins and Bell. The decision-

ist illusion is overestimated by various theorists of local devel-

opment because the true problem is that each person thinks for

himself and the spreaders of doubts, including the non-existent

fear of the decisionist illusion, indirectly contribute to feeding

this fragmentation. The anti-decisionism theorists do not elabo-

rate procedures in which the pacts are maintained and there is

not formed an élite which justly applies sanctions, via incre-

mental solutions, to whomever is not changing and is wasting

time. The TPD serves to cement a local élite that wishes to go-

vern the processes with strategic choices or incremental deci-

sions requiring selectivity and priority in the choice of the clus-

ters of demand (not all types of tourists are suitable to the des-

tination) and that is aware that “not all the locals can exchange

with all” (some locals are excluded because they have nothing

to exchange or are incompetent). In fact, the TPD does not

reproduce the model of laws aimed at “helping” enterprises but

a new model, that of the creative group and of working toge-

ther.

As underlined by the failure of assistance to enterprises (De

Blasio & Lotti, 2008), the inter-organizational model supports

those who would undertake innovation or would start a new

network enterprise, apart from the presence of such an organ-

ism, because they believe in the new business models and are

convinced of being able to do so with their own abilities but

know that with the network organization they can overcome

many company limits and operational marketing limits. There-

fore, the TPD is loose in the opportunities offered but not ge-

neric because it is held back by the fear of decisionism. It is

open to the methods of socio-economic exchange and, contem-

poraneously, it delineates executive projects (to be tested dur-

ing subsequent focus groups) on which to have the players con-

verge, it sets precise limits within which the collaborative part-

nerships are asked to move.

The TPD activates mechanisms of internal competition. It

places at the centre the entrepreneurial activities of the players

of tourism, hospitality, transport, culture, agriculture, environ-

ment, gastronomy, fashion, sport and other sectors connected to

the ever more numerous international mobilities.

Conclusion: The Sociologist as Facilitator for the

Initiation of Collaborative Marketing of “Made

in Italy” Hospitality Networks

This article has highlighted the up skills of the sociologist/

facilitator of tourism development. The sociologist/facilitator

knows “how to” ensure that the players of the economy, tour-

ism, art, fashion and gastronomy meet, dialogue and begin to

work on a “strategic project” to be assessed through focus

groups and to be realized through policy documents created in a

bottom up manner. As applied sociologist, he/she is a “crafts-

man” (Hartmann & Sonnad, 2007) of the local development.

How can the results of his action be assessed with respect to

the expectations concerning these results? One positive result is

the very fact that people belonging to different sectors and un-

known to each other prior to his facilitation discover that they

N. COSTA

have common interests and that they can benefit from “giving

in order to be able to receive something in exchange”. The suc-

cess is total if the TPD is included in the destination manager’s

agenda-setting and it helps to realize a broader policy aimed at

improving the quality of life of the residents and the visitors,

the “hospitable city” (Costa, 2005, 2008).

The analysis of Italian hospitality, in which the stakeholders

try to integrate tourism resources and other resources connected

to hospitality (e.g. fashion, food and wine, arts and archaeo-

logical areas), demonstrates that the sociologist/facilitator knows

how to contemporaneously use qualitative and quantitative stu-

dies. The two types of studies are complementary in the practi-

cal activity of bottom up planning inspired by sustainable tour-

ism (for confirmation, Davies, 2003; Riley & Love, 2000).

What counts is including the knowledge in participatory and

shared bottom up planning with precise and clear objectives.

Applied sociology does not seek truth but helps the players to

decide in an aware manner by facilitating communicative ra-

tionality among the stakeholders.

What inter-organizational model is suitable to plan and pro-

mote hospitality? The present study has provided an answer:

the mobile network model for the new mobilities of contempo-

rary society (Urry, 2007; Larsen, Urry, & Axhausen, 2007; also

Adey, 2010). Following the results and advice of the interna-

tional literature, it is necessary to begin a program of bottom-up

sensitization to provide public administrators and entrepre-

neurs with higher-level skills so that they are able to under-

stand and satisfy the needs of the new international middle

class of city users (Martinotti, 1993) or leisure tourists (Steb-

bins, 2007, 2012) or new creative middle class (Florida, 2002).

The destination’s tourism operators are also required to be crea-

tive and professionalized like the customers they wish to host.

They must contribute to the enhancement of the material and

immaterial culture, they must have the lifestyle of the visitors.

They must become professionalized, intellectualized and cos-

mopolitan. This path of change can be accelerated by relying

especially on young graduates in tourism disciplines who have

also studied abroad and by favouring the most competent

among them. To this purpose, the marketing of cultural tourism

products is devised by the economic players under the direction

of an external facilitator who helps them move, during the se-

minars and focus groups, from passive acceptance of mass

tourism to regulation of community-oriented tourist flows, from

the model of top-down governance to the model of bottom-up

governance, from individualism to competitive collaboration,

from localism to expansive glocalism.

In this context, LTS, TD, CD can be realized and “true” stra-

tegic plans can be approved as consequences of a collaborative

vision of local development, whose performance is measured

on the basis of the economic results achieved through the years.

In fact, the products characterized by immaterial culture and

material culture become “product clubs” and the governmental

organ of the district or system (they are the same thing) tries to

combine the promotion and sale of these products. What counts

is innovating with proposals modelled on the needs of the in-

ternational middle class, which must be satisfied in order to

spend more, to begin positive word-of-mouth marketing and to

accept small price increases year after year (thus reducing the

costs of the incoming enterprises in the promotion and man-

agement of the flows) because it acquires fidelity to the desti-

nation and to the enterprises.

The tourism district must be considered a large supermarket

of Made in Italy hospitality defined in terms of quality and local

uniqueness. The tourist enters the destination convinced of buy-

ing only a few things and leaves with a shopping cart full of

goods. He has been seduced by the destination manager, who,

supported by the long work of planning initiated with the neo-

community and syste mic self-asse ssmen t, ha s accompanie d him

to see places adapted to his expectations so as to help him hap-

pily spend where the locals want him to spend. The metaphor of

the shopping cart full of goods describes whether the district or

system (and any strategic plan) has been successful.

The difficulties that stakeholders have encountered in realiz-

ing territorial networks of Made in Italy hospitality are due to

limits in the knowledge management of the local institutions

and the incoming tourism entrepreneurs. Recourse to the exper-

tise of the sociologist/facilitator, who accompanies the proc-

esses of development with a good theory in mind and pragma-

tism in knowing how to create the networks and systems (phi-

losophic practitioner), can help the locals overcome the limits

of their knowledge, which in turn limit the success of the par-

ticipatory planning.

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