How Italian destinations are organised today and strategic directions for the future

How are Italian tourist destinations organised today?
Which governance models have been adopted, and which strategic choices have been made to strengthen competitiveness, coordination, and attractiveness?

These are questions that only appear to be technical. In reality, a decisive part of the future of Italian tourism depends precisely on these issues.

Because a destination is not simply a place to promote, but a complex system made up of public administrations, operators, networks, visions, tools, priorities. It is a delicate balance between strategy and action, between identity and market, between the ability to tell its story and the ability to organise itself. And when this balance is missing, even territories rich in beauty, history, and potential risk moving in a fragmented, disordered, and sometimes even ineffective way.

Looking at the Italian landscape, one reality clearly emerges: there is no single way of being a destination. There are territories that, over the years, have built fairly solid models, with governance bodies, planning tools, and a structured market presence. And there are others where initiatives are not lacking, but struggle to converge in a common direction. The differences are many: contexts change, territorial scales change, public-private relationships change, and the maturity levels of local systems change. In many cases, coordination among stakeholders remains difficult and strongly dependent on local contextual conditions.

This means that, even in the face of tourism growth and increasing attention towards strategies, projects, and resources, Italian destinations do not always manage to translate all this into truly effective governance.

On the one hand, Italian tourism is setting new records in 2025, with a +2% increase over 2024 and more than 476.8 million overnight stays according to the first 2025 data released by Istat; on the other hand, there has not been equivalent growth in terms of territorial organisation and governance.

The point, in fact, is not only to have a plan, a budget, or a series of active actions, but to understand whether that system actually works. Whether decisions are guided by a vision, whether data are collected and used, whether operators collaborate within a clear framework, whether promotion, sustainability, the tourism product, and internal organisation truly speak to one another.

For a long time, the debate on these issues has moved mainly through intuition, case-based narratives, and qualitative evaluations. Shared indicators, benchmarks, and comparative tools were missing. In other words, a compass was missing. And when there is no standard for reading destinations, it becomes more difficult to define priorities, compare models, assess impacts, and support territories along more conscious growth paths. In essence, there is a risk of governing without a real common framework for interpretation.

What ANDI is and what it is for

It is within this context that ANDI, the National Audit of Italian Destinations was created, a project conceived and developed by Expirit and Ideazione with the objective of providing policymakers and territorial systems with a useful tool to read destinations more clearly, comparably, and in a decision-oriented way.

ANDI was not created to “rank” Italian destinations, but rather as an operational tool: it measures, compares, and guides. It transforms complex phenomena into indicators, positions destinations against reference benchmarks, and helps shift from a logic based on perceptions to a more structured logic capable of supporting strategic decisions.

To analyse destinations, ANDI considers five general pillars that cover the entire functioning of a territorial tourism system:

• Governance
• Tourism offer system
• Communication
• Promotion/commercialisation
• Sustainability

ANDI is therefore designed to provide an AS-IS snapshot of the state of tourism governance and understand the situation in which a destination currently stands, namely which of the 9 clusters of the results matrix it belongs to. Starting from the data, that is, from the 6 indices created to analyse governance, a matrix is built along two axes — structure & strategy and operations & market — from which 9 clusters emerge that help interpret the destination’s situation.

The cross-reading of the indices, the cluster in which the destination falls, and the comparison with a benchmark of similar destinations and overall averages help provide a better understanding of tourism governance.

This snapshot can be used to understand which gaps need to be filled and to outline a new strategy by accurately identifying priority actions. This is where the value of ANDI lies: a tool that does not aim to produce rankings or classifications, but simply to help understand the current situation and translate data into concrete indications, so as to identify the most appropriate development model.

The testing phase: a first reading of the Italian destination system

To test the model, ANDI was applied to an initial sample of 30 Italian destinations distributed across the North, Centre, South, and Islands, and belonging to different geographical and tourism contexts. It was a heterogeneous sample, built to include destinations of different scales, with different tourism volumes, different territorial extensions, and different vocations — urban, rural, mountain, and coastal.

Last 26 March, Giacomo Andreani of Expirit and Enrico Ferrero of Ideazione presented the results emerging from the first survey carried out using this tool.

During the meeting, several findings clearly emerged.

1. The first concerns governance: in many cases it exists, it is formalised, and it is equipped with tools. But it does not always manage to translate into operational capacity. The strategy exists, but it struggles to become action.
2. The second concerns data: often collected, but rarely used systematically. The data exist, but they do not become a lever for decision-making.
3. The third concerns the tourism offer system and the network of stakeholders: connections exist, and so do relationships. But in many cases, there is still a lack of real integration capable of transforming collaboration into a system.
4. And then there is the issue of digitalisation and sustainability: areas in which some presence is widespread, but where maturity is still uneven. There is communication, investment, and experimentation. But not always in a coordinated and strategic way.

The resulting point is clear: the problem is not the lack of tools. It’s the lack of integration.

Looking ahead

The presentation of the results from the testing phase is only a first step in the development of ANDI.

The feedback received will be translated into new implementations and adjustments to both the platform and the underlying model. We will continue this path in the coming months to make the tool even better and more useful for destinations.

For more information, feel free to write to us: we will be happy to show you ANDI.