Domestic and International Tourism in Sicilian Bathing Resorts: Evidences from Official and Ad-hoc Survey Data

Similarly to other social phenomena, tourism demand has recently been affected by social complexity: travellers select destinations on the basis of situational and mixed preference criteria, of which common features are however identifiable. In order to plan tourism policies, decision makers are wondering how the new trends of international tourism materialize at the local level. That’s why in Sicily the debate is still open on the reasons why tourism has not developed as much as expected. In this paper we shall discuss such arguments using both official statistics and data from the sample researches made in 2004 and 2005 in two well-known Sicilian bathing resorts, the Aeolian Islands and Cefalù.