Preliminary Considerations on Cultural Tourism in Abruzzo as a Strategic Tool for the Renewal of the Regional Tourist Offerings

Although the number of initiatives of place promotion, the Abruzzo tourism offer remains essentially polarized around two basic segments (the seaside/summer segment and the mountain/snow-based one) and it strongly depends on the proximate tourist demand. Actually the Abruzzo region holds a wider and varied heritage, composed by cultural attractions, historical and architectural resources, wine and food potential and, more generally speaking, a lot heterogeneous environments and landscapes. These resources could respond to the new philosophies of tourism demand, characterised by the experiential motivations of peacefulness, tranquility and soul regeneration in a very close contact with nature. The goal of this study is to evaluate the potential tourism usability of the Abruzzo cultural heritage assessing the levels of the distribution of accommodation facilities and attractiveness. A more aware and integrated tourism offer may produce complementarities both at product and territory levels and may also absorb some critical issues of the regional tourism industry (no awareness of cultural tourism potential, the fragmentation of public policies, the inability to cooperate with a networking mentality)