The European Tourism Indicators System (ETIS) is a product of the European Union (EU) Sustainable Development Strategy, which was formulated with the objectives of promoting economic prosperity, social equity, cohesion, and environmental protection. In this paper, we present an analysis of the results of the implementation of the ETIS during the period 2013–2016, in the Italian tourist destination of South Sardinia. While the implementation of ETIS constitutes a significant advancement in Italy, and more widely in Europe, our findings reveal that an adaptive management approach is necessary for achieving the anticipated objectives and adapting these standardized indicators to different territorial contexts. Difficulties were encountered in both data collection and stakeholders’ involvement in the implementation process. Insufficient knowledge, and familiarity with the complex technical aspects of the indicator toolkit among primary stakeholders, was another constraint associated with its implementation. We believe that the findings of this analysis can provide guidelines and inputs for other European countries and tourist destinations that are currently in the process of implementing the ETIS toolkit or similar methodologies. In particular, the pioneering sustainable tourism performance measurement system (STPMS) can be adapted to meet local needs.

In many tourism destinations, sustainability of the local economy leans on small and medium-sized hotels that are individually owned and operated by members of the community. Suffering from seasonality more than their big competitors, these hotels should undertake marketing initiatives to counteract wide demand fluctuations. Such initiatives are most effective if based on accurate occupancy forecasts, which must be performed at the individual hotel level. In this aim, the present paper suggests a demand forecasting approach adapted to specific features that characterize reservation data for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the hospitality sector. The proposed framework integrates historical and advanced booking methods into a forecast combination with time-varying, performance-based weights. Whereas historical methods use only past observations about the number of guests recorded on a particular stay night to forecast future room occupancy (long-term perspective), advanced booking methods predict bookings-to-come based on partially accumulated data from reservations on hand (short-term perspective). In order to provide a possible solution to data sparsity issues that affect the application of advanced booking models to hospitality SMEs, a procedure that incorporates length-of-stay information directly into the reservation processing phase is also introduced. The methodology is tested on real time series of reservation data from three Italian hotels, located either in a city center (Milan) or in a typical destination for seasonal holidays (Lake Maggiore). Model parameters are calibrated on a training dataset and the accuracy of the occupancy forecasts is evaluated on a holdout sample. The results validate earlier findings about combinations of long-term and short-term forecasts and, in addition, show that using performance-based weights improves the quality of forecasts. Reducing the risk of large forecast failures, the proposed methodology can indeed have practical implications for the design and implementation of effective demand-side policies in hospitality SMEs. These policies are expected to provide a competitive advantage that can be crucial to the sustainability of small establishments in a context of growing global tourism.

To make sustainable tourism a more concrete and operational concept, many sets of indicators have been proposed by both academics and policy makers. Among the latter, the European Tourism Indicator System (ETIS) was launched by the European Commission to monitor tourist destinations at a subnational level. To evaluate the social impact of tourism, the ETIS recommended the administration of a proposed questionnaire to the local residents. We conducted the survey administration of the ETIS questionnaire in an Italian seaside resort. In this paper, we report the main outcomes of the survey and propose their interpretation within the context of some of the theoretical frameworks described in the academic literature referring to the relationship between tourism and host communities.

The European system of indicators is the result of the European Union sustainable development strategy, based on the objectives of economic prosperity, social equity, cohesion and environmental protection. In 2010 the EC defined four strategic priorities: encourage competitiveness in the tourism sector, promote sustainable high-quality tourism, strengthen the image of Europe as a tourism destination, and finally, improve EU financial policies and instruments. This paper aims to analyze in a positive critical perspective the experience done during the period 2013-2014 in the Italian destination Visit South Sardinia. This experience is in one hand an important primacy in Italy and in Europe, but in the other hand has not reached the expected objectives. Many difficulties were encountered both for data collection and for stakeholder involvement. Also the complexity of the indicators tool kit is relevant. Even if the experience of VSS did not produce the expected results, we believe that the analysis carried out in this paper can help and support other countries and or other destination in Europe in the process of implementation of the ETIS indicators tool kit in order to adapt the system itself to the needs that are encountered locally.