TURISMO, ARTIGIANATO, PRODUZIONI TIPICHE STUDIO PER UNA ECONOMIA SOSTENIBILE DELLE AREE PROTETTE SICILIANE

The project was born with the aim of creating a regional system of integrated tourist services aimed at enhancing the naturalistic characteristics, environmental and cultural protected areas of the regional territory and aimed at reducing the significant local imbalance between supply and demand. It is a concept and organization of the offer of sustainable tourism that aims at the enhancement of the structures of hospitality and services to tourism already existing within the regional areas with strong environmental value (system of parks, nature reserves and marine protected areas), encouraging their networking and planning of new tourist products generated by the sum of the different local specificities (landscape, historical and cultural, food and wine, etc.). The SiciliaNatura network is structured and put into operation during the 24 months of the project; in the management of the activities will be central the role played by 135 "promoters/ promoters of sustainable tourism" that, at the end of a training action lasting 5 months, carried out in each Sicilian province (15 recipients per province), will follow an accompanying path to the creation of enterprise lasting 8 months and aimed at establishing the "SiciliaNatura Point", local structures connected in a regional network, that will coordinate the relational networks between the different stakeholders (hoteliers, tour operators, agri-food companies, catering facilities, park and reserve managers, environmental and cultural associations, local authorities, etc.) development and promotion of new local tourism products and services. The SiciliaNatura Points will be linked to the SiciliaNatura Regional Services Centre (CSR) in a "network of networks", which will define marketing strategies through agreements with local economic operators (more directly involved in the organization of different tourism products) and the various entrepreneurial and institutional subjects involved in the promotion of the tourist product. The division of a "charter of the quality of the services provided" will allow to identify the minimum elements to be presented by the different services that will compete in the organization of the overall offer. The telematic portal SiciliaNatura (www.sicilianatura.org) will allow the multi-media management of content and added value services for the marketing of sustainable tourism, the promotion of products and services, commercial transactions and the coordination of relations between the SiciliaNatura network, tourists and the various economic and institutional operators involved. SiciliaNatura therefore intends to structure a true "integrated sustainable tourism system" for the use of Sicilian protected areas, which is recognizable, competitive and qualified. The structured network within SiciliaNatura will also be promoted through the production and publication of videos and information material on tourist itineraries developed in the context of the project, participation in fairs and events in Italy and abroad, the organisation of specific events to boost sustainable tourism, including the first regional sustainable tourism fair to be held in autumn 2009. In order to properly guide the implementation of the project, the first step of SiciliaNatura was to commission Mercury, a leading company in the field of research and advice in the field of tourism, a study on the Sicilian territory to monitor the "already existing" in protected areas. The research, presented in this volume, provides updated data on hospitality in the mountains, tourist flows, nature trails, artistic, gastronomic and natural riches of the various parks and reserves; analyzes the segments of nature tourism; studies the profile of tourists "na- ture based" in different contexts and trends of international tourism; identifies limits and potential of the Sicilian environment and finally proposes strategic lines functional to the development of the network SiciliaNatura and in general sustainable tourism.