Touristification in Italian cities of art

2035

After years of insufficient policies to combat climate change, air quality in major Italian cities has deteriorated dramatically. Cancer cases caused by PM2 and other fine particles have increased by 15 percent going to impact a health care system that is increasingly struggling due to continued cutbacks and theaverage aging population.
For this reason, the Italian government, following the directives of the international community, has adopted new rules for green mobility that penalize international tourism. The global increase in temperatures also has facilitated the development of new viruses that are being contained with difficulty. This is also why efforts are made to limit arrivals from certain parts of the world.

The short-term rental bubble has now burst. After steady growth leading to market saturation in 2030, it was decided to tighten the rules resulting in a collapse in bookings.

RESORT TAX

%

HOUSE LIMITATION
SHORT RENT.

max 2

HARD TAXES
FOR PLATFORMS

NEW RULES.
COMMUNITY

Marzia’s story.

For almost 50 years, Marzia ‘s family has had a store in downtown Florence that sells a little bit of everything from souvenirs to typical products, but most importantly, it offers services to tourists: especially guided tours and cooking classes. Due to government-imposed travel restrictions, however, there are fewer and fewer tourists, and each year it is harder to make ends meet. In 2030 the work group had 10 employees, today there are only six left, and at this rate Marzia will be forced to cut even more.

The air quality is bad, and those who travel to Italy do so to stay in one of the many wellness centers that have sprung up in provincial cities. A healthy setting to clean out the lungs before throwing yourself back into the smog of the increasingly populous metropolises. To make matters worse, extreme weather events (flooding, violent hailstorms, and tornadoes) are commonplace for long stretches of the year, and the city is not made to endure them.

Florence still has its charm, but people now consider it a stopover than they did 10 years earlier. Many hotels have closed, and with the entrance fee to the historic center raised to 30 euros to try to limit car smog, by now even Italians are keeping their distance.

The only positive aspect of this absence of tourists is that reception facilities such as vacation rentals have declined, and Marzia’s son Francesco has been able to afford an apartment near the family store so he can help out. A few years earlier it would have been impossible, so much so that he had to move out of town to find affordable rents.

What you have just read is not an impossible story, but aforesight hypothesis that tells one of the probable scenarios related to the phenomenon of touristification in Italy.

Turistification:

Progressive abandonment by residents of central urban areas and consequent replacement of neighborhood and artisan businesses with those destined to mass consumption related to tourism.

IT ALL STARTED WITH A
BLACKBOARD AND POST IT NOTES

Following the PESTEL (Political, Economical, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal) framework, which focuses on seven macro-categories, we chose signals (variables that already exist, but still have relative impact) and trends (defined forces that will greatly influence the topic at the center of the analysis).
After that we selected those useful for defining a coherent scenario (drivers).

The result is what you have read.

BUT TOURISTIFICATION IS ALREADY
IN OUR CITIES…

Any foresight theory, however, must connect to the data that now tell of an increasingly relevant phenomenon in major Italian cities. In Rome, Venice, Florence and Naples, tourism numbers are back to full strength after the pandemic:

21,5
million

arrivals in Rome in 2022. The Capital alone exceeds the 16.5 of the other three cities combined.

4,5
days

the average stay in the capital, while in Florence, Venice and Naples one stays two days or less.

60
million

The attendance (arrival + stay) of the four art cities.

… AND THE MARKET EVOLUTION OF THE
SHORT RENTALS IS ONE OF THE CONSEQUENCES

Airbnbs open in 2022. Confirming a steady trend that saw a pause only in the pandemic years.

%

the beds covered by non-hotel facilities in Rome and Venice. In Naples they are growing steadily, while in Florence they are “only” a third of the market.

FEW HOSTS CONTROL
MUCH OF THE OFFER

LEGISLATIVE MEASURES

For this reason, a number of restrictions are being worked on to control the phenomenon of timeshares used as vacation homes. Proposals include limiting the maximum number for private individuals to two. A decision that in Rome, for example, would affect 80 % of the market, but only 16 % of the owners, as we have seen…

This would not only result in a fairer taxation of those who have made the short-term rental market a real business, but more importantly it could result in lower rental prices in the more central areas of cities. A high number of bnbs, in fact, is always correlated with high rental prices, due to a more limited long-term rental market and ever-high demand.

THE SATURATION SIMULATIONS

Tourism numbers and airbnb numbers impact very differently based on the area available to cities. In Florence and Venice, for example, space is now limited, while Rome and Naples are holding up the pressure without any major struggles, albeit for different reasons (breadth of territory, lagging market development).

If tourism growth trends remain as they are what would happen? We tried to answer this question by developing a predictive model of saturation.

INTERACTIVE MAPS FROM NORTH TO SOUTH

VENICE

FLORENCE

ROME

NAPLES

THERE IS NEVER JUST ONE SCENARIO
OF FORESIGHT

2035

Continued population growth (we are nearly 9 billion according to the UN) and the expansion of middle classes globally are driving a general increase in tourist flows. Italian art cities can be visited in relative comfort even in a few days and thus remain among the favorite destinations for an increasingly aging population. The result is cities overrun with tourists. Climate change is not a brake, but it has changed the habits of travelers. In the summer months, tourists travel less and many businesses decide to close for medium to long periods as they do in ski resorts outside the months when the slopes are open. Thus, the tourist flow in art cities is concentrated from January to May and from September to December.

The proliferation of increasingly refined systems to manage crucial phases of vacation rental hospitality (e.g., check in) or the constant updating of PayApps that enable fast and secure payments are changing the lives of people who put up homes for rent. Added to this is the development of artificial intelligence, which is increasingly within everyone’s reach, making it easier to analyze data, providing the homeowner with better results and support in sensitive stages of accounting administration. Some people are starting to talk about the metaverse as a substitute for mass tourism, but so far no one is taking it seriously.

For this second scenario, we always used the PESTEL method, but focused on different elements than the first hypothesis. A similarly solid picture emerged, but with completely opposite results.

Fabio’s story.

Fabio is a 40-year-old architect living in Rome. It is November 2035, it is 22 degrees, and thanks to his life savings he decides to invest everything in a small apartment in the area near Centocelle Park. In fact, thanks to the completion of Metro C, even the semi-suburban neighborhoods in the southeast quadrant of the city are becoming desirable, especially considering that by now downtown vacation rentals have completely saturated the housing market, driving up prices. This is also why in a few hours the vacation home is already booked for the whole year. Most requests come from China and India.

Fabio wakes up in the morning and while making coffee sets up automatic check-ins that guests can do via app. Before leaving the house, it asks ChatGpt to formulate a welcome text in Chinese based on those that have been most liked in the past and asks the AI, integrated with the check in system, to send it as soon as guests have entered.
Back home after a day of work, Fabio asks Ai to add the earnings from that week’s vacation home to the tax return form that the system has already generated for him.

METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH QUESTION

These are the questions we tried to answer

How does touristification affect Italian art cities?

What are the prospects for the short-term rental market?

But there are many others that we will analyze by expanding the research.
For example: what effect will major sporting events have?

DATA SOURCES.

InsideAirbnb: data on Airbnb’s short term rentals.

Capacity of accommodation establishments, ISTAT (2023)

ISTAT tourism indicators, (2023)

Real Estate Market Observatory (2023) – Real Estate Quotes

FORESIGHT SOURCES

World Economic Forum, transformation maps, sections: tourism, migrations, housing, artificial intelligence (2023)

ARUP (2019) 2050 Scenarios

European Parliament, Data collection and sharing relating to short-term accommodation rental services (2023)

Senate of the Republic, Budget Bill (2024)

House of Representatives, bill on short term rentals (2023)

www.airbnb.it/e/affittibrevi,“Airbnb’s proposal” (2023)

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