The Management Models of a Tourist Destination in Italy

The paper reviews the evolution of key tourism destination concepts, with the aim to emphasize the extent of changes that occurred in understanding the term ‘destination’ over the past decades. A special emphasis is placed on the concept of the organization of Italian tourist destinations. Starting point of the analysis is the understanding of the development process of networks in tourism. Attention was paid to the relationship between the Italian approaches to tourism management (Tourism District, Tourist Local System SLOT, Destination Management (DM)). The governance of a complex system such as that of tourism requires a strong legislative anchoring and a daily practice which, based on what is established by law, is able to give answers to the different stakeholders of a territory and is able to indicate a development vision.