Indicators of Tourist Market Appeal and Sustainability. An Analysis of Italian Opera Houses

This paper aims at pointing out how Italian Opera Houses are facing the challenge involved with tourism, after some recent institutional changes which transformed them in private foundations. Here we put in evidence the potential tourist appeal and the sustainability of a tourist approach for all of the Italian Opera Houses. This issue is addressed constructing two indicators of market appeal and sustainability. Resorting to a deep documentary research and an ad hoc questionnaire survey, we detected and measured the relevant dimensions of market appeal (physical setting, popularity outside the local area, overall tourist appeal of the hosting city, geographical allocation, proximity to other heritage attractions, ease of access, services and infrastructure provision), and sustainability (physical state of theatre, as well as its cultural significance, including architectural, historical, educational, and social values). According to the measures of each dimension considered, Opera Houses are ordered in a ranking. Interesting information come from the spreading of the Opera Houses over a “positioning map”, originated from market appeal and sustainability composite indicators.