Sustainable Tourism Law

FROM TOURISM TO SUSTAINABLE TOURISM 45 evolution of Tourism and Tourism Law in a single country. Italy, moreover, is a country of traditional hospitality, accustomed to host pilgrims from all over Europe in the Eternal City 22 . But pilgrims were not the only visitors. Our art cities, and the gentleness of the landscape, have always attracted travellers from all over Europe. The “journey in Italy” represented, in the past century, a fundamental component of the cultural path of the European aristocracy. Generations of German gentlemen travelled to Italian cities with the Goethe “Italienische Reise” under their arms. In the ports and the most characteristic coves of our peninsula, British boats were orbiting. British villas have been built in the most beautiful places of Italy. When tourismbegan the process of transformation from an elite phenomenon to an industry, Italy took advantage of this ancient tradition. At the end of the 19th century and at the time of the Belle Epoque , elegant Hotels flourished, and the big tourism organizations were born 23 . Thanks to the initiative of Quintino Sella 24 , the Italian Alpine Club was founded in Turin in 1863. In 1894, the Touring Club Ciclistico Italiano (now TCI) was founded in Milan. From the latter originates the Italian Automobile Club. In 1897, the La Lega Navale Italiana was founded in the city of La Spezia. In 1919 Bortolo Belotti wrote the first modern book on tourism 25 . Early Italian tourism legislation Meanwhile, the first laws connected with touristic activities were approved. The first organic law on tourism dates back to 1910 (Law 11 December 1910, no. 863), which laid the foundations of the “Pro loco”. The law was also aimed at financing works for the development of climatic resorts featuring baths and for 22 On the history of Italian Tourism see, in Italian, Patrizia BATTILANI, Vacanze di pochi. Vacanze di tutti. L’evoluzione del turismo europeo , Bologna, Il Mulino, 2001; Vincenzo FRANCESCHELLI, Storia breve del turismo italiano e della preparazione professionale alle attività turistiche , in Il Turismo in Lombardia in un quadro nazionale e internazionale , Giovanni Tonini Editor, Milano, 2002. 23 Patrizia BATTILANI – Francesca FAURI, The rise of a service-based economy and its transformation: seaside tourism and the case of Rimini , in Journal of Tourism History, 2009, Published online on 19 Mar 2009. The autors obseve that “As late as 1905, Rimini had some 200 small villas but only five hotels, two of which were situated in the town centre and were normally used by travellers passing through (rather than by holidaymakers as such), while the other three had been transformed from pre-existing villas”. And “the number of hotels in Rimini rose from 14 in 1913 to 137 in 1939”. 24 Quintino Sella was an Italian minister of Finance in the XIX Century. 25 Bortolo BELOTTI, Diritto turistico, Milano, 1919; see V. FRANCESCHELLI, Le origini del diritto del turismo e “Il Diritto Turistico” di Bortolo Belotti (The origin of Italian Tourist Law and the publication, in 1919, of “Il diritto Turistico” by Bortolo Belotti) , in Rivista Italiana di Diritto del Turismo , 2011, 45-48.