What went wrong? A retrospective analysis of destination policies in overtouristed hotspots

In the last decade, “overtourism”, identified as an unbearable massification of tourism concentrated on some “hotspots”, has emerged as urgent in the debate on tourist policies. Earliest studies suggested that this idea resulted from the perception of the inhabitants rather than from empirical analyses. However, more refined quantitative indicators and statistical arguments have grown later in support of an overflow of tourists in some specific destinations.

What made this evolution of tourism, and its side effects, happen in some places rather than in others? Previous research has questioned the role of destination policies aimed at capturing the interest of the global tourist industry, but a detailed analysis is still missing on which specific strategies created the conditions for overtourism in some destinations and for abandonment in others. A retrospective study of political and technical discussions on tourism is essential to understand which interpretive frames underpinned the choice of specific measures and actions.

This project identifies three different case studies to be compared as representative of extreme conditions of tourism, in the context of the evolution of the national tourist policies.

Venice is the most renown city suffering from tourism overflow and monoculture. Its history as a tourist destination marks a turn in 1980 with the sudden and sustained expansion of Winter tourism. The in-depth study of the public debate in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s focuses on the role of the seasonal volatility of arrivals and the distinction between “proper” tourists and excursionists in framing destination policies.

The case of the Cinque Terre concerns a coastal cluster of five villages located along the East coast of Liguria, which has become one of the most popular Italian tourist destinations worldwide. However, due to the rapid growth of tourism flows, concentrated in a limited and fragile territory, this destination has reached a saturation level, with a relevant problem of overtourism. The research will focus on exploring the destination policies that transformed the villages into successful tourist attractions and led them to overexploitation.

The new National Parks established during the 1990s contrast with the previous destinations because of the opposite effect of cultural and “green” tourist policies, which did not attain the expected economic results, starting a depopulation trend. The research aims to verify whether the Park of the Foreste Casentinesi and the historic villages that persist in the area are ‘victims’ of the narratives of mass tourism: the area, in fact, intercepts a deadly fraction of the flows attracted by Florence (56 km away) and Siena (98 km) and ongoing policies seem unable to change the situation.

Below we present a synthesis of the research findings:

Tourism, Marginality, and the Limits of Development Policies: The Casentino Case in Historical Perspective

Introduction

This article presents a synthesis of the results produced by the research unit of the University of Macerata within the PRIN 2022 project What went wrong? A retrospective analysis of destination policies in overtouristed hotspots. The research focused on the historical evolution of tourism in Casentino, an inland valley in eastern Tuscany, with the aim of understanding why more than a century of tourism policies failed to transform the area into a significant tourist destination.

The broader PRIN project compared different trajectories of tourism development in contemporary Italy, analyzing both cases of overtourism and situations characterized by limited tourist growth. Within this comparative framework, Casentino represented the opposite pole of destinations such as Venice or the Cinque Terre: not an overcrowded tourist hotspot, but rather an area where tourism remained economically marginal despite continuous political expectations and promotional efforts.

The research therefore explored a central historical question: why do some territories become global tourist destinations while others remain peripheral, despite possessing environmental, cultural, and historical resources often considered attractive?

Tourism and the Myth of Salvific Development

One of the main findings of the research concerns the ideological role increasingly attributed to tourism in contemporary public discourse.

For decades, tourism has frequently been represented as a universal solution capable of compensating for industrial decline, demographic crisis, and economic stagnation. In Italy, this narrative became particularly influential in relation to inland and rural territories, where tourism was often imagined as a sustainable alternative to deindustrialization and depopulation.

The historical reconstruction of the Casentino case challenges this optimistic interpretation.

The valley possesses many of the elements commonly associated with successful tourism development: forests, mountains, monasteries, castles, medieval villages, local traditions, hiking routes, and a strong environmental identity connected to the National Park of the Casentino Forests. Yet tourism never became a transformative economic sector.

The research demonstrates that tourism cannot automatically generate development simply because a territory possesses cultural or natural resources. Tourism depends on infrastructures, accessibility, institutional coordination, investment capacity, symbolic visibility, transport networks, market positioning, and broader geographical dynamics.

In the case of Casentino, structural marginality constantly limited tourist growth.

A Peripheral Territory

The research reconstructs the long-term historical evolution of Casentino from the late nineteenth century to the present.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the valley remained geographically isolated and difficult to access. Tourism was initially linked to elite travel, religious destinations such as Camaldoli and La Verna, and literary fascination with the places associated with Dante.

The publication of Carlo Beni’s illustrated guide in 1881 symbolically marked the beginning of modern tourism in the valley. However, poor roads, weak transport systems, limited accommodation, and difficult internal mobility severely constrained tourist flows.

Even after the construction of the Arezzo-Stia railway line, Casentino continued to appear as a remote destination characterized by modest infrastructures and seasonal tourism.

The historical sources analyzed by the research reveal a recurring contradiction: local elites continuously promoted tourism as an opportunity for economic modernization, but concrete investments and coordinated long-term strategies remained limited.

This contradiction persisted throughout the twentieth century.

Tourism Between Expectations and Reality

During the Fascist period and the economic boom decades after the Second World War, tourism increasingly became part of broader modernization policies.

Road infrastructures improved, car mobility expanded, and mass tourism grew across Italy. Yet Casentino remained marginal compared to coastal destinations and major art cities.

The research identifies several structural limitations:

• weak transport connections;
• fragmented local governance;
• insufficient accommodation capacity;
• limited private investment;
• lack of a coherent territorial brand;
• inability to integrate tourism into a broader development strategy.

At the same time, the valley experienced industrialization during the second half of the twentieth century. Manufacturing activities, rather than tourism, became the main driver of local economic growth.

This aspect is particularly important because it complicates simplified narratives surrounding tourism.

In public discourse, tourism is often imagined as a natural vocation for rural and historical territories. The Casentino case instead demonstrates that local communities may orient themselves toward entirely different economic priorities. For decades, industrial employment provided more stable incomes and stronger social structures than seasonal tourism.

Tourism therefore remained secondary and structurally fragile.

The Limits of Rural and Slow Tourism

Another major finding concerns the contemporary rhetoric surrounding rural tourism, slow tourism, and the “return to villages.”

In recent years, Italian public debate has increasingly idealized small towns and inland territories as spaces of authenticity, sustainability, and alternative lifestyles opposed to urban modernity.

The research adopts a far more critical perspective.

Historical analysis shows that inland areas such as Casentino continue to face severe structural problems:

• demographic decline;
• aging populations;
• reduction of healthcare services;
• weak public transport;
• limited educational opportunities;
• digital and infrastructural deficiencies;
• economic marginality.

These problems cannot be solved through tourism alone.

The research strongly criticizes romantic narratives that portray villages as naturally harmonious spaces capable of attracting stable populations simply through cultural promotion or tourism marketing.

Without strong infrastructures, advanced services, and diversified economies, tourism risks producing only temporary and fragile forms of economic activity.

At the same time, the study also rejects the opposite extreme represented by overtourism.

The comparison with the Cinque Terre is particularly revealing. Until the 1960s, the two territories shared several characteristics: difficult accessibility, agricultural economies, depopulation, and limited tourist infrastructures. Yet their trajectories diverged radically.

The decisive difference was geographical.

The Cinque Terre benefited from their coastal position, allowing them to intercept the massive international demand for seaside tourism. Casentino, as an inland mountainous territory, could not rely on comparable structural advantages.

This comparison demonstrates that tourism development is deeply shaped by geographical asymmetries that local policies alone often cannot overcome.

The National Park and Environmental Tourism

The creation of the National Park of the Casentino Forests contributed to the emergence of new forms of environmental tourism connected to hiking, ecotourism, and nature-oriented experiences.

The research highlights both the opportunities and the limits of this transformation.

On the one hand, the park strengthened the symbolic identity of the valley, reinforcing its environmental image and attracting forms of tourism associated with sustainability and slow mobility.

On the other hand, these forms of tourism remained numerically limited and economically insufficient to reverse long-term processes of demographic decline and economic marginalization.

The research also underlines the persistence of political fragmentation and local conflicts surrounding the governance of the park itself.

Institutional rivalries, competing local interests, and the absence of stable strategic coordination frequently weakened long-term planning.

As a result, tourism development remained fragmented and discontinuous.

Tourism, Identity, and Social Transformation

The research ultimately argues that tourism cannot be reduced to a purely economic phenomenon.

The history of tourism in Casentino reveals complex interactions between economy, identity, environment, politics, memory, and social change.

Tourism policies continuously reshaped local representations of the territory. Forests, monasteries, castles, and villages were transformed into symbolic resources through processes of cultural reinterpretation and selective narration.

At the same time, tourism also generated tensions.

Some local actors viewed tourism as an opportunity for modernization and economic integration. Others feared the transformation of local identities and social structures. Public debates therefore oscillated between enthusiasm and skepticism, between developmental ambitions and awareness of structural limitations.

This ambiguity continues to characterize the present.

Despite moderate growth in tourist flows during the early twenty-first century, Casentino remains a peripheral destination within the Tuscan tourism system. Tourist pressure is relatively low, the accommodation sector remains limited, and tourism continues to play a secondary role compared to broader socio-economic dynamics.

Conclusion

The research suggests that tourism should not be interpreted either as a universal solution or as an inherently sustainable alternative to industrial modernity.

The historical case of Casentino demonstrates that tourism development depends on long-term structural conditions that cannot be easily modified through marketing strategies or rhetorical celebrations of local authenticity.

The study also invites a broader reconsideration of the contemporary discourse surrounding inland territories.

The romanticization of villages and slow tourism often obscures the concrete material difficulties experienced by local communities. At the same time, the pursuit of mass tourism risks generating environmental degradation, social disarticulation, and dependency on unstable economic flows.

Between these two extremes, Casentino represents a particularly significant historical case because it reveals the limits, contradictions, and ambiguities of tourism-led development in peripheral territories.

Rather than offering simplistic solutions, the research highlights the need to understand tourism as part of wider historical processes involving deindustrialization, demographic transformation, infrastructural inequality, environmental policies, and changing cultural imaginaries.

From this perspective, the history of tourism in Casentino becomes part of a broader reflection on marginality, development, and the asymmetrical geography of contemporary capitalism.