The Italian Hôtellerie system

It is well known that Italy is the country that presents the largest number of UNESCO sites worldwide.

This extraordinary Italian merit is the reason why the “bel paese” is one of the most visited places at the international level: tourism represents in fact one of the most profitable sectors on which the economy of the entire country is based.

Given that the demand is pretty high and the needs of the clients are different, the Italian Hôtellerie system offers a wide range of choices:

–     hotels are accommodation establishments that present unified management and provide accommodation, possibly food, and other additional services.

They are generally situated in historical centers or by a short distance from a central building;

–     bed and breakfasts are usually family-run accommodation facilities but could be managed by privates too. These structures provide just accommodation and breakfast;

–     motels are hotels specially equipped for parking and assistance of cars, which provide the repair and refuelling services;

–     beauty farms are hotels equipped with special facilities of a specialized type of stay aimed at cycles of dietary, aesthetic, and therapeutic treatments;

–     residential hotels have unified management and are located in one or more buildings or parts of buildings, which offer accommodation and ancillary services in furnished housing units, consisting of one or more rooms, equipped with independent kitchen service;

–     hotel villages are establishments equipped with the same requirements of hotels and/or residential hotels, characterized by the centralization of the services in the function of more stable being part of the same complex and inserted in the equipped area for the stay and the amusement of the customers.

Analyzing the historical data, the Italian hotel offer has undergone an uninterrupted restructuring process that has led to the increasing reduction of the number of structures and to an increase in the accommodation capacity in terms of the number of rooms and beds.

Moreover, the quality of the facilities has improved.

This process has been more intense in the North than in the South. However, the average size of hotels, as well as the presence of higher category hotels, characterizes the southern regions.