This is what emerges from the elaboration of the Local Authorities Study Center, based on Istat data (2019), carried out for Adnkronos.
In Italy, the municipalities classified as touristicfor various reasons (due to their cultural, historical, landscape, maritime or mountain vocation) are the overwhelming majority: 6,222 out of 7,926, that is 79% of the total. From the elaboration of the Local Authorities Study Center on the basis of Istat data (2019), carried out for Adnkronos, it emerges that the displacement on the territory is ” very uneven ”. There are 1,704 municipalities that the National Statistics Institute has branded as ‘non-tourist’. These are areas where there are no accommodation facilities and / or where tourist flows are absent.
The classification in question, explains the CSEL, is not merely informative. In fact, it was carried out in application of a rule contained in the relaunch decree, which had entrusted Istat with the task of classifying economic activities with reference to areas with a high tourist density, in order to highlight the territorial tourist connection and allow access to targeted support measures in favor of businesses in the trade, catering and accommodation sectors affected by the prolonged reduction in tourist flows.
The results, explains the Study Center, ” will therefore depend on the possibility or not of accessing some concessions designed to help operators in the tourism sector to recover from the heavy penalties that have been induced by the restrictions imposed to contain infections from Covid 19 ” .
Twelve Italian cities catalyze one fifth of the presences in accommodation facilities
About a fifth of the presences registered in Italian tourist structures are catalysed by 12 large cities. These are administrations with more than 250,000 inhabitants (Bari, Bologna, Catania, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Rome, Turin, Venice and Verona) which, alone, host 15.3% of the national population, and recorded, in 2019, over 86 million days of presence in accommodation facilities, equal to 19.7% of the national total.
All the cities belonging to this group are placed in the top quintile of the synthetic index of tourist density. A result achieved by 1,210 municipalities overall, 15% of the total, explains the CSEL. The presence of tourists recorded in over 400 municipalities ‘with a cultural, historical, artistic and landscape vocation’ is also significant. These are mainly distributed in the Center-North and a little less in the South and the Islands. They have just under 7.4 million inhabitants and have attracted 7.8% of national tourists.
In Molise only 35% of tourist municipalities. 100% in Valle d’Aosta, Tuscany and Umbria
In Molise the tourist municipalities are only 35%, while in Valle d’Aosta, Tuscany and Umbria the goal of 100% is achieved. Molise is ” the only Italian region in which the non-tourist municipalities far exceed half, even reaching 65% ”, explains the CSEL, while the national average stops at 21%.
Istat, as part of its classification, has identified 89 out of 136 entities that would be characterized by this nature. Second to Molise, is Calabria with 183 non-tourist municipalities out of 404 (45%), followed by Lazio (34%), Sardinia (31%), Lombardy and Basilicata (28%), Campania (29%), Sicily (26 %), Abruzzo and Piedmont (23%).
On the other hand, Friuli Venezia Giulia (11%), Veneto and Puglia (7%), Liguria ( 5%), the Marche (4%), Trentino Alto Adige and Emilia Romagna (2%). Positive limit cases are Valle d’Aosta, Tuscany and Umbria, which are the only 3 Italian regions in which, according to Istat data, there is not a single non-tourist municipality.
86% of the tourist tax reliefs went to municipalities in the center-north
86% of refreshments for missed collections from tourist tax it went to municipalities in the center-north, with Rome alone it obtained 29.5% of the national resources. While the south and the islands had to share the remaining 14%. The CSEL reminds that the government took the field, to compensate for the losses due to the covid, for a total of 350 million, to be divided between the entities that introduced the tourist tax. Only one out of 6 of the municipalities with a tourist vocation identified by Istat (1,041 out of 6,222), chose to apply the tourist tax in 2020.
Driven by the capital which alone accounted for over 103 million, Lazio obtained compensatory contributions for 106.5 million (equal to 30% of the national total). At a safe distance, followed by: Lombardy with 50.8 million (14%), Veneto with almost 45 million (12.8%), Tuscany with 43.2 million (12.4%), Campania with 21.7 million (6%), Emilia Romagna with almost 17 million euros (5%), Trentino Alto Adige (16 million, or 4.6%), Sicily with 11.2 million (3, 2%), Piedmont with 9.6 million (2.8%), Sardinia (8.2 million, equal to 2.3% of the total) and Liguria (6.9 million, equal to 2% of the total ).
The remaining regions did not reach 1%: Calabria (about 3 million), Puglia (2.9 million), Friuli Venezia Giulia and Umbria, still around 1.8 million, Basilicata, Valle d’Aosta and the Marches, which have just exceeded one million euros and Abruzzo (approximately 700 thousand euros). Lagging behind, once again, Molise with only one municipality included among the beneficiaries (Agnone) and therefore a contribution of only 479 euros.
” The tax, required of tourists who stay overnight in accommodation facilities in the area, can bring significant figures into the coffers of the institutions ”, recalls the Study Center. Amounts whose consistency ” was clearly undermined by the anti-contagion regulations which, also last year, as well as in 2020, strongly contracted the possibility of moving around the territory ”. To contain the effects of these shortages, the Government distributed, with two measures (the first launched in July and the second in December 2021), a total of 350 million euros to the municipalities by way of ‘partial relief for lower revenues. deriving from the failure to collect the tourist tax or the landing fee, as well as the tourist tax ‘.
Of these, 5.5 million were used to compensate for the missed collections deriving from disembarkation grants, while the remaining 344.5 million were directed towards the shortages attributable to tax and tourist tax. Who benefited from it? Most of these money flowed to the municipalities of the center-north which alone catalyzed 86% of the resources. The South and the islands had to share 14% of the refreshments, just over 49 million euros. In particular, according to the elaborations of the Centro Studi local authorities based on data from the Interior Ministry, it was the 4 regions of central Italy that took the lion’s share, absorbing 152.7 million.
Source-www.adnkronos.com