TITLE:
The Applied Sociology of Tourism. The Up Skills of the Facilitator in the Italian Hospitality Industry
AUTHORS:
Nicolò Costa
KEYWORDS:
Community; Local; Facilitator; Self-Assessment Tools; Local Tourism Development; Participatory Planning; Made in Italy Hospitality Industry
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Applied Sociology,
Vol.3 No.1,
March
15,
2013
ABSTRACT: The sociology of
tourism can be considered applied sociology. Therefore, it is necessary to
ascertain the up skills of the sociologist in the process of tourism planning.
The present paper refers to the idea of philosophic practitioner as a
theoretical model and considers the sociologist as a facilitator of local
tourism development. To this purpose, I discuss some topics and working tools
that can be used when the sociologist is asked to help local stakeholders
create significant involvement of the local community. In particular, I propose
some self-assessment tools to be included in a tourism process centred on local
participation. The paper focuses on fundamental questions concerning the
techniques of bottom up regulation and the techniques to facilitate the passage
from individualism to collaborative marketing in order to attract visitors
suitable to the destination. The discussions are based inductively on tourism
economic policies initiated inItalyto create collaboration between local institutions and enterprises aimed at
integrating local resources (accommodation structures, transport, gastronomy,
art and archaeology, etc.) and creating districts or systems of Made inItalyhospitality. The results indicate the sociologist of tourism as a facilitator
of the collaborative partnership in support of the destination management. Many
difficulties in creating tourism districts or systems are due to the absence of
this type of professional figure.