Tourism Development in UNESCO Natural Heritage Sites: The Case of Sicilian Volcanic Sites: Mount Etna and Aeolian Islands

Local development often depends on tourism, especially in fragile contexts like islands which represent a specialcluster and are the best cases to be analyzed in order to highlight positive and negative aspects of economicdevelopment driven by tourism. A sustainable development approach should be taken in account and the UNESCObrand plays a fundamental role in this sense. The aim of this paper is to analyze the link between tourism supplyand the growth of tourism demand in the case of UNESCO sites through multivariate regression analysis. Theresults show a correlation between the variables considered. But the actual structure of supply is still built onconventional sea tourism and is not yet organized to host and attract tourism demand connected with the UNESCOactive volcano area. The UNESCO brand could guarantee a new approach for local tourism development ifassociated with a specific tourism supply structure.