Demand Trend of Italian Agritourism

The demand side for agritourism in Iatlay has not been fully investigated despite the relatively hig number of studies of the suplly side. THus this paper statistically examinated the trends in the demand side for agritourism in Italya in comparison with tourism deman in generale, such as for hotels.Data were obtained from Annuario Statistico Italiano edited and issude by ISTAT (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica), Data from 1997 were compared with those from 2006.We examined the regional characteristics and trends in the composition of domestic and inbound tourists in relation to agritourism. The results are as follows.(1)Agritourism experienced rapid growth in the number of beds available and of those tourists who stayed overnight during the last decade while the operation rate of agritourism is much lower than that of tourism in general.(2)Region -wise the central region acoounts for a large portion of agritourism demand ande the southern region had the largest growth rate while more tha half of the total agritourism demand. The remaining demand was filled by inbound tourists from European countries.Among inbound European tourists , tourists from Scandinavia, Uk and Germany, increase sharply and therefore these inbound tourists are drining the growth of agritourism in this country.Even if we consider the partcicular reasons for the barriers to travel in Europe , such as the availability of land routes , a common cuurency with no risk presented by exchange rates , etc., these finding clearly indicate thst it is essentila for the development of agritourism to count not only on domestic but also inbound tourists to raise the operation rate.