Going on holiday in a borgo will not help borghi (historic villages) come back to life

As the summer months approach, attention shifts — as it does every year — to tourist flows, with particular focus on less frequented destinations where people might spend their holidays.

This is a condition that in recent years has taken up ever more space in public debate, not least because of the proliferation of Italian cities exposed to increasingly dense international tourism.

The choice of a so-called alternative tourist destination, once the badge of specific target groups, has in recent years become more and more a need that combines economic considerations, the push for exclusivity, and the desire for experiential travel.

There is more: with the growing reflection on the phenomenon of overtourism, choosing a destination far from major urban centres has also acquired an added intangible value of an ethical kind.

None of this is entirely new: before overtourism there was responsible tourism, and the great tourism currents linked to food and wine. There was the problem of deseasonalisation and cultural initiatives scheduled well outside the summer months.

Today, however, the ethical approach has broadened, and choosing a destination that is not overrun becomes a tool for fostering the revitalisation of borghi, of inland areas, and of all those territories associated with a condition of "difficulty."

This ethical association can amplify — and perhaps is already amplifying — certain expanding tourism trends, first among them the trend of summer mountain tourism.

A trend that has posted double-digit growth in recent years, further boosted by organisations that promote, through the creation of events and cultural programmes, a very interesting tourism segment, often characterised by higher spending capacity than the average summer holidaymaker.

A phenomenon of this kind is undoubtedly interesting, and the connection between growing tourist flows, increased cultural activity and tourist economic initiatives on the ground are developments that certainly deserve acknowledgement.

Despite all of this being desirable, it is important to remember that the development of a seasonal (or bi-seasonal) tourist activity can only ever be one part — albeit an important one — of a territorial development plan. Especially when at the centre of the discussion we find borghi or mountain municipalities with generally small populations and structures that frequently belong to owners from elsewhere.

The revival of borghi through tourism is not a process of rebuilding inland areas; it is a process of transforming territories into tourist destinations.

In market logic, this is not necessarily a bad thing — quite the opposite. A community has every right to pursue a transformation of this kind, especially when the alternative looks considerably less rosy.

It is, however, important to acknowledge this, and to ensure that communities can act by making responsible and informed choices.

Local administrations (Amministrazioni) play a central role here: they are the institutions that citizens have chosen as organs of territorial governance, and therefore the institutions that — more than any other level of our republican organisation — know the needs of their territory and can interpret its medium- to long-term ambitions.

It is on them, above all, that the burden falls of understanding how to transform seasonal tourism (summer and winter) into one piece of a broader strategy — one that allows for the gradual recovery of new residents, new citizens, new businesses, new services.

With those conditions in place, administrations can genuinely find in tourism the resources for building a path of territorial growth. If instead we accept that the mere influx of tourists to an otherwise sparsely populated place is in itself a lever for the development of that territory, then we have entirely misunderstood not only "tourism" in its broadest sense, but also the economic mechanisms that govern it.

However much a tourist may be perceived as a temporary citizen, they will necessarily remain a "non-professional citizen" — because the profession of citizen, like any other profession, derives from the continuity with which a given art is practised.

Framing "alternative" tourism within a correct framework can be a lever for development.