Sustainable Tourist Development in Italian Holiday Destinations

This paper argues that tourism will become a major activity in amodern welfare state, which will have serious consequences for environmentalsustainability. This issue calls for an assessment of the pros and cons of theecological efficiency of tourism. We propose an overall efficiency indicatorthat comprises both a sustainable tourism index and an economic efficiencyindex. Based on a data set for Italian provinces and using Activity Analysis, aquantitative assessment of the relative position of Italian tourist destinationareas is made from the perspective of sustainable tourism.