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334 Italy
944,227 rooms �1,724,333 beds). There are 2,346
collective tourism establishments with 1,223,671
beds. This huge availability of accommodation was
built primarily with domestic investments and is
thus entirely Italian. Hotel chains only started
taking an interest in Italy a few years ago and their
market presence, even for 4-star and 5-star hotels,
is fairly weak in comparison to the number of
rooms handled directly by national businesses. This
feature has its positive and negative aspects. On
one hand, it has allowed for the totally endogenous
tourism growth while, on the other hand, modern
management has been late in coming to what
are basically small and medium-sized �often familyrun)
businesses.
Italy completed its postwar economic reconstruction
in 1958, leading to a fundamental
restructuring from a basically agriculture-based to
an industry-centred economy. Between the two
world wars, tourism was a balm to the structural
deficit of its balance of payments and is still an
essential item among its exports. Without tourism,
Italy's balance of payments would have been in
serious difficulty over recent decades. The trend is
now stable. In 1985 international tourism receipts
rose to $8.7 billion, compared with free on board
exports amounting to $78.9 billion. In 1995,
international tourism receipts jumped to $27.4
with respect to exports totalling $231.3 billion.
Outbound tourism amounted to $2.3 billion in
1985 with respect to cost insurance freight imports
amounting to $90.9 billion. In 1995 expenditure of
Italian tourists going abroad reached $12.4 billion,
in comparison to cost insurance freight imports of
$204.1 billion. This confirms that tourism is Italy's
main export of services and its second largest
export item with respect to different goods, with a
total of 11.1 per cent of exports in 1985, rising to
11.9 per cent in 1995. From the viewpoint of
expenditures in comparison to imports, the total
rose from 2.5 per cent in 1985 to 6.1 per cent in
1995, demonstrating the high level of industrialisation
that Italy has reached and, with respect to the
past, the Italians' strong desire to travel abroad.
As a result, Italy has a pre-eminent position in
the international tourism market. It ranked
fourth among the world's top country destinations
from 1980 to 1996. The annual average growth
rate in the same years was 2.5 per cent, the share of
arrivals worldwide reached 7.7 per cent in 1980
and touched 5.5 per cent in 1996. In the same
years, Italy moved from third to second rank for
tourism receipts among the world's top tourism
earners, with an annual average growth rate of 8.4
per cent. In the share of worldwide receipts it
reached 6.9 per cent in 1996 in comparison with
7.8 per cent in 1980. In the ranking of the world's
top tourist spenders in the same sixteen years, Italy
moved from thirteenth to sixth place with an
annual average growth rate of 14 per cent. This
was the highest among the first ten spender
countries. In the same period, the share of
expenditures worldwide rose from 1.8 per cent to
4.1 per cent, showing a net trend in the Italian
outbound tourism demand following the country's
economic evolution. Finally, among the
countries with the highest surplus in the world for
international tourist balance of accounts, Italy with
$15.1 billion took third place in 1995, after Spain
and the United States but before France.
The changes in the economic structure over the
last thirty years have determined a net change in
the trend of tourist arrivals, which consisted
primarily of foreigners until the beginning of the
1960s. In 1996, over 29 million tourists from
abroad stayed in Italy, compared to over 57 million
Italian tourists. This is due to the economic
position Italy has achieved, ranking sixth worldwide
in GDP in 1995 as well as being in sixth place
in terms of worldwide exports. In addition, Italy is
in second place after Japan in terms of current
balance account surplus, and in sixth place in
terms of industrial production.
However, despite these statistics Italian tourism
faces a series of momentous problems in the future,
problems that, for two reasons, were hidden by the
trends of recent years. The first reason is the almost
complete monopoly of Italy's immense cultural
heritage, which encourages foreign tourists to
visit Italy at least once. The second reason is the
location of Italy near a series of important
European spender countries. In addition, the lira's
sharp devaluation, falling almost 30 per cent with
respect to the US dollar in 1992, makes Italian
tourism prices a better bargain. But problems still
remain. Italy's image as a seaside resort has
declined due to territorial saturation and ecological
damage, while cultural tourism remains a