Proximity tourism in a peripheral area: the Mountains of Pistoia, Tuscany

The Pistoia Mountain area, 30 km from Pistoia and about 90 km from Florence, was the traditional holiday resort of the local bourgeoisie, a tourist model that disappeared from the 1980s onwards. However, its main municipalities, San Marcello Piteglio and Abetone Cutigliano, saw a strong increase of tourism in 2020, during the Covid pandemic. The phenomenon repeated, and further strengthened, in 2021 and 2022, fostering the interest of local stakeholders on the role of the proximity tourism in developing the area, also thanks to a study made by CNR and University of Florence. The research revealed the characteristics of the tourist supply and demand, with the various types of accommodations, from traditional small family-run hotels, to the new B&Bs managed by families, to the business model that rents second homes through OTA platforms (Airbnb, Booking, etc.), and the various types of operators (restaurants, nature guides, farmers, bicycle rental services, etc.) Interviews and focus groups conducted with entrepreneurs and stakeholders made a SWOT analysis, used for defining public policy proposals to exploit the strengths of the tourism filière, reduce its weaknesses, exploit the new tourism models and avoid the threats from bad economic and social scenarios. Our study highlights the opportunities that are based on the richness of the natural assets and on the heterogeneity of the tourist filière, which satisfies numerous segments of the demand (food and wine, culture, outdoor sports, etc.), but also noted the negative effects of the environmental threats (impact on the ski-resort) and the difficulty of integrating the initiatives promoted by local administrators (area brand of origin, fairs, shows, new infrastructures, etc.) and that ones from individual entrepreneurs (websites, promotional offers, etc.). Among the most innovative proposals that are being implemented are: i) the set-up of a public center (Mo.To.RE.) for providing services and professional training to operators; ii) new integrations between the tourism and forestry filières (forestry therapy); and between the tourism and mechanical filières (pure active ingredients from red pine needles).