Tourism in Puglia, yes it's growing. But overtourism is still a long way off

The overtourism and mass tourism debate has well and truly landed in Italy's tourism-industry conversation. The issue is increasingly framed as a source of conflict — above all between tourists and local residents — and local administrators have been rolling out all sorts of remedies, each tackling a different angle of the problem. Venice has introduced entry tickets; in the Balearic Islands they're going after short-term rentals; Barcelona has capped cruise passengers, deemed too numerous and with insufficiently deep pockets.

The sharp growth in tourist flows to Puglia over the last fifteen years has repeatedly brought overtourism into the conversation here too. Yet according to the new Indice Complessivo di Sovraffollamento Turistico (ICST — Composite Tourist Overcrowding Index) in the Demoskopika report, Puglia is still a long way from the pressure levels that characterise Italy's major destinations, already in a critical phase. The national ranking puts Rimini at the top with a normalised index of 141.5, followed by Venezia at 137.3 and Bolzano at 131.6. Then come Livorno, Napoli, Milano, Trento, Roma and Verona, all above 110 — a band Demoskopika labels "Very High" overcrowding.

The report measures overtourism through five indicators: tourist density, meaning the ratio of overnight stays to territorial surface area; accommodation density, the ratio of beds to surface area; tourist intensity, measuring the ratio of overnight stays to resident population; gross utilisation rate, i.e. the saturation of accommodation facilities; and — perhaps the most telling for our times — a parameter relating to urban waste, calculated as the share of rubbish produced that is attributable to tourism.

This is how you see that overtourism isn't simply a headcount of tourists, but a measure of how concretely the phenomenon affects the daily life of local communities.

Puglia finds itself in a quite different position. Every single province sits below 100, so none falls into the "High" or "Very High" bands identified in the report. Lecce, the symbol of the region's tourism explosion, comes in fortieth place nationally with 99.7 points. Brindisi stands at 98.4, Bari at 97.7, Foggia at 96.1, and Taranto stops at 94.4. Numbers that tell a less dramatic story than what is often perceived. There's a difference between experiencing road and beach congestion during the summer months — which admittedly happens often enough in Puglia — and facing a territory that is structurally overloaded all year round, as is the case in certain cities around the world that have become symbols of mass tourism.

A few more telling figures. In terms of overnight stays, Rimini records over 17,000 per square kilometre, Venezia exceeds 15,000, Napoli tops 12,000 and Milano surpasses 11,000. Lecce, by contrast, stops at 2,000 overnight stays per square kilometre, with Brindisi at 1,300 and Bari not even reaching 1,000. The gap is equally striking when it comes to tourist intensity. Bolzano, for example, reaches almost 69 tourists per resident, Venezia 47, Rimini 44 and Trento 36. Lecce stands at 8 tourists per resident, Bari at 3 and Taranto at 2. Puglia is growing fast without yet putting the whole system under strain. The region's real problem, if anything, seems to be a tourist pressure that is neither uniform nor constant, but extremely concentrated in certain periods and places. Some coastal resorts experience intense peaks in July and August, while vast inland and urban areas continue to hold enormous untapped potential. Venezia, by contrast, lives with relentless year-round tourism that tests urban functioning, the property market, services and even the social fabric of its historic centre every single day.

None of this means the risks in Puglia are absent. And this is precisely the moment when Puglia can still choose which direction to take. The international image Puglia has carved out for itself in recent years — built on experiential tourism, local food culture and high-end investment — has attracted a more discerning, high-spending audience. Upmarket tourism doesn't automatically eliminate the problem; it can bring other distortions, property price inflation first among them. However, it tends to generate lower numerical pressure than high-density, low-cost tourism. It is a model that demands trained staff, services of a corresponding standard and far more structured management. Work will be needed on deseasoning, strengthening cultural events, developing inland areas, distributing flows and investing in services and urban quality.

A challenge that will require shared coordination between public and private actors — but above all between local authorities and the Regione (regional government).