Alaska is a model for tourism

In a period like this one, the search for tourism models capable of combining travel experience with respect for nature is very much on the agenda.

Although Alaska can undoubtedly offer some useful food for thought in that direction, the reflection here focuses on something quite different.

The protagonist of this article is not ice, nor natural heritage. The protagonist of this article is oil. Or rather, how Alaska, roughly fifty years ago, decided to regulate the management of revenues derived from oil sales.

When Alaska understood that oil would have significant and long-lasting economic relevance, it made a choice that, then as now, represents a kind of international unicum: Alaska recognised oil as a common good, and as such, belonging to all citizens. In light of this, it established an instrument — the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, which turns half a century old this very year — a fund that invests the returns from oil sales and distributes dividends to qualifying resident citizens.

This mechanism is perhaps one of the most correct models of "linkage" between public asset and individual benefit. What the fund pays out is not a welfare measure in the slightest: it is a return on ownership.

Over time, the fund has naturally acquired a very important role, and part of the profits flow into the public budget. But that portion of dividends paid directly to citizens remains an element that ought to prompt more than a little reflection.

From a "political" standpoint, a public good is public because it belongs to everyone. Or rather, to all resident citizens of a given territory. If that premise holds, then a public good that generates income must redistribute at least part of that income to citizens.

Many will argue that this condition is almost always satisfied: if a public asset generates an economic benefit, that benefit is immediately recorded in the public budget, which implies an indirect transfer to citizens — since those additional resources support a portion of expenditure that citizens would otherwise have to bear themselves.

A realistic argument, provided the public budget plays a "neutral" role and the administration is efficient enough to generate further returns from those economic resources. Neutrality and efficiency, however, are not the first qualities generally attributed to the Pubblica Amministrazione (public administration). Especially in our country.

The connection to tourism is clear: if tourism generates greater revenue for a territory, then part of that revenue must be redistributed among citizens, or at least some of them.

The management of public resources, in fact, is not always such that an extra euro of spending translates into some more or less defined quantity of benefits for citizens.

Not because the State recognises those citizens as subjects deserving welfare, but because the State recognises in its own citizens the ultimate owners of the territory's resources — resources that can be inserted into specific value-creation chains.

Tourism in Naples belongs to the Neapolitans too. Just as tourism in Rome involves and belongs to the Romans. And it belongs to these citizens not on the basis of administrative generosity, but as a matter of direct entitlement.

The vast majority of reasons why Italy is today at the centre of tourist interest can be understood as public goods, or at least as "collective property." Natural heritage, for example, while "publicly" owned, does not belong to the municipality, which is merely called upon to administer the wealth of a territory on behalf of its citizens.

Without wishing to enter into scientific-technical detail — which would only risk complicating the matter — the entire concept being expressed here is this: if a country benefits economically from the "exploitation" of a public good, it is called upon to recognise a share of that good for its citizens.

Such an assertion would change not only how citizens perceive tourist flows, but would also — quite evidently — revolutionise the relationship between citizens and the things and places that belong to everyone, not only in tourism terms, but also in terms of territorial development.

If a citizen, entirely uninformed on the subject, were to receive a small return generated by the systemic economic benefits produced within the country by a public good, then their relationship with the territory would certainly be different from what we so often see today.

Above all, a model of this kind, applied to tourism, would allow people to feel like "homeowners" once again — stopping them from feeling like hostages to international flows.

Today, indeed, the world of ownership in Italy far too often divides into "private" property — what belongs to the individual citizen — and property "of the State," which is to say property that is third-party relative to oneself.

This mechanism could effectively change that approach, and this could be an incentive to cooperate for the purposes of territorial development.

Tourism, in this sense, is probably one of the industries that best qualifies for the creation of "pilot tests." It already presents a value-creation chain that is inherently distributed; it frequently develops along dimensions that belong to all citizens, whether material or immaterial; it generates, as is repeated every year with ever-greater conviction, a consistent share of national GDP.

Making tourism a "collective" industry — not state-owned, but collective — could genuinely be a model capable of capturing and transferring to citizens the benefits derived from intangible assets and industries. A challenge that will sooner or later need to be faced.