Integrated planning for sustainable tourism and mobility. A tourism traffic analysis in Italy's South Tyrol region

Anna Scuttaria, Maria Della Luciab* & Umberto Martiniba Institute for Regional Development and Location Management, European Academy of Bolzano (EURAC Research) , Bolzano, Italy b Department of Economics and Management, University of Trento , Trento, Italy Anna Scuttari is a scientific researcher at the Institute for Regional Development and Location Management at the European Academy of Bozen-Bolzano (EURAC research), Italy. Her research fields include tourism and sustainable mobility, destination management and governance, regional development and customer satisfaction.Maria Della Lucia is an assistant professor of economics and management at the University of Trento in Italy and a member of the eTourism research group (http://etourism.economia.unitn.it). She teaches marketing, strategy, destination management and models of local development. Her research interests include local/regional development, destination management and governance, sustainable tourism and well-being, sustainable mobility, event management and marketing, and economic impact analysis as an investment decision-making tool. She focuses on community-based alpine and rural destinations.Umberto Martini is a full professor of economics and management at the University of Trento in Italy and a senior member of the eTourism research group (http://etourism.economia.unitn.it). He teaches marketing and tourism marketing. He is the scientific coordinator of the School of Tourism Management at the Trentino School of Management. His research interests include tourism management and marketing, tourist behavior and decision-making, and service quality, with a focus on community destinations, particularly alpine destinations. Email: maria.dellalucia@unitn.itEmerging tourist market trends are compelling destinations to consider mobility as an essential strategic component of sustainable tourism planning. Tourism mobility analysis is a tool available to policy-makers when developing integrated and effective sustainable transport and tourism policies. This paper introduces an innovative tourism-traffic analysis based on survey techniques which allows the identification of tourism-related components and an estimate of their environmental impact on a destination, information critical to the development of appropriate mobility management measures. This methodology was implemented in Italy's South Tyrol region, an alpine province at the forefront of sustainable tourism and mobility innovation. The significant environmental impact of tourism traffic revealed in the destination justifies the innovative steps taken toward sustainable mobility in two pilot case studies covering eight communities. An exploratory desk analysis shows that neither the push – encouraging sustainable behavior – nor the pull – discouraging unsustainable practices – mobility measures adopted in these pilot areas decreased tourism flows; however, they did succeed in providing more environmentally sustainable means of transport, with reduced emissions. And in a majority of cases, tourism flows increased above the regional average. A range of problems with the existing methodology are described, along with key issues for future research.