The impact of the pandemic on tourism in Italy. Some reflections on employment

Abstract

The impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has produced on tourism has been, and in part still is, dramatic from a quantitative point of view and, in many ways, not entirely predictable from the point of view of qualitative and structural transformations. Much specialist literature has been produced on the subject practically in real time and the debate, especially from the point of view of the tourism development model of the future, is still open. In this note we try to contribute to this discussion through some observations made on the dimension of tourist occupation in Italy. It seems, in fact, that the pandemic has highlighted the many factors of structural weakness in the sector, and that the message to be received is decidedly that of a significant change in the objectives and methods of tourism development.