Author profile: Francesco Pecci contributes this analysis through the Economics Living Lab, a spin-off of the University of Verona.
The article explains how the economic impact of food and wine tourism in Italy can be estimated by combining official sources such as Istat, the Bank of Italy and ETC data on travel motivations and behaviour.
The analytical challenge: available sources do not always isolate visitors explicitly motivated by gastronomy, especially when travel motivations overlap. The work therefore integrates official data with revealed preferences in order to build a more reliable estimate.
Why it matters: quantifying the economic relevance of food and wine tourism is essential if destinations and policymakers want to manage it as a strategic component of the national tourism system rather than as a secondary niche.
