ACCOMMODATION FACILITIES AND OCCUPANCY: WHICH PERFORMANCES IN ITALIAN PROVINCES?

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1 ACCOMMODATION FACILITIES AND OCCUPANCY: WHICH PERFORMANCES IN ITALIAN PROVINCES? Valentina FERRI, University of Bari, Via G. Toma 59 Bari (Italy), Giuseppe LOLLO, University of Bari, Via Vittorio Veneto 19 S.Agata Militello ME (Italy), Abstract: Tourism in Italy is a very important field that resists better than other in these years of economical crisis. The paper aims to analyze the performances of Italian hotel and the other accommodation facilities in terms of occupancy rate of bed places. First of all we have considered the occupancy of hotels and similar establishments in Europe. Then we have calculated the number of nights spent by tourists in Italy, for each bed places in all kind of accommodation facilities. At the end of the study we have performed two hierarchical cluster analysis (Ward s method), the first-one regards the occupancy rate of bed places in hotels (five and four stars hotels, three stars hotels and residences, two and one stars hotels), the second-one regards the occupancy of other types of accommodation facilities (camping and holiday villages, rental apartments, farmhouses holyday and other accommodation as bed and breakfast, hostels, alpine hut, holidays homes). The cluster analysis has shown that the occupancy in terms of hotels in Italian provinces is highest in the most visited provinces and it is relatively uniform in the provinces situated in cost areas. Different performances have emerged in the North West of Italy where the heterogeneity of occupancy is so significant. A different occupancy concerns other collective establishments. The North and Centre of Italy have good and more similar occupancy of these accommodation facilities in contrast to the Southern provinces, some of the central provinces and most of territories in the North West of Italy. Also, for these establishments, emerges the importance of North-Eastern area of Italy that is a particularly developed areas, with a lot of services. The analysis bring out the fact that a lot of provinces, despite the quantity of hotels and other accommodation facilities, have not an adequate occupancy. Keywords: tourism, performances, bed occupancy rate. INTRODUCTION Tourism has suffered this serious economical crisis. The worst year, according to what the data show, was 2009, when there was a sharp decline particularly in arrivals. More recently the tourism industry is recovering in terms of arrivals and overnight stays, except in a few cases. The most visited countries by domestic and international tourists are Germany, France, Spain, Italy and United Kingdom (tab. 1), among these destinations, Spain is the first country with regard to international tourist arrivals and Germany for internal arrivals. Because this sector contributes a lot to the European economy, to achieve a significant improvement may be optimized the use of resources. Therefore it s very interesting to observe the spatial distribution of accommodation facilities in Europe and the occupancy levels. Page 76

2 Table 1 Arrivals in Europe, 2010 [16] Countries Total arrivals Countries Foreign arrivals Countries Internal arrivals U. Kingdom U. Kingdom Italy Italy Germany Spain Spain France U. Kingdom France Italy France Germany Spain Germany A yardstick for economic growth due to tourism field is the bed occupancy rate that is obtained by dividing the total number of overnight stays by the number of the bed places on offer (excluding extra beds) and the number of days when the bed places are actually available for use (net of seasonal closures and other temporary closures for decoration, by police order, etc.). The result is multiplied by 100 to express the occupancy rate as a percentage (source of data: Eurostat sites). In the table 2 we can see the best performances in occupation rate of bed places don t concern the most visited countries. First of all the occupancy rate increases between June and September in all European Countries, many of them show high rate of occupancy in these months: France, Spain, Greece, Ireland, Great Britain and Croatia (also Malta and Cyprus probably for the countries size). Italy exceeds 50% of bed occupancy only between July and August, in the other months goes from 24,6 % to 43,5 %. This trend underlines first of all the seasonality of our inbound tourism. Although we have verified the importance of the Country in the European context, from this point of view, Italy does not show excellent performances in occupancy terms, probably caused by a large presence of accommodation facilities in all kind of areas. France has the highest number of tourist bed places among European countries, the latest available data is beds (in 2009), so there is a significant number of accommodation facilities. In Italy the number of tourist bed places in 2010 were , Great Britain, Spain and Germany vary approximately from 3 million to 3,3 million. This is significant, because in some cases the large amount of accommodation facilities, doesn t correspond to an adequate occupancy rate, so supply and demand don t coincide. Table 2 Net occupancy rate of bedrooms, 2010 [16] Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dic Belgium 25,7 31,6 31,5 38,5 40,8 38,6 43,7 46,0 42,2 41,0 35,5 34,3 Bulgaria n.d. n.d. 15,7 n.d. n.d. 23,6 n.d. n.d. 43,5 n.d. n.d. 15,2 Czech Republic 25,1 28,4 30,1 32,7 37,7 36,7 42,2 45,2 40,3 39,1 29,7 26,3 Denmark 23,0 26,0 30,0 32,0 41,0 46,0 61,0 54,0 42,0 40,0 37,0 28,0 Germany 24,4 29,5 30,4 34,3 40,2 41,9 44,6 46,2 47,1 42,2 32,6 29,6 Estonia 27,0 28,0 29,0 37,0 41,0 45,0 62,0 53,0 38,0 39,0 35,0 35,0 Ireland 26,0 34,0 38,0 40,0 43,0 50,0 57,0 62,0 52,0 50,0 32,0 32,0 Greece 21,9 23,9 23,9 23,1 40,6 54,3 68,2 73,8 58,6 32,4 21,0 22,7 Spain 34,4 41,1 44,2 48,0 48,7 54,8 60,1 66,9 53,7 42,0 26,4 22,6 France 34,5 39,8 41,8 45,9 50,4 53,5 59,0 61,8 53,4 45,7 38,2 39,2 Italy 26,1 30,0 30,1 31,5 33,2 42,7 57,8 63,0 43,5 34,5 25,1 24,6 Cyprus 29,1 36,6 40,1 40,8 59,8 68,8 78,2 88,9 74,8 66,9 41,8 28,2 Latvia 17,3 17,9 18,2 20,6 25,6 33,9 46,0 45,7 33,8 31,1 19,1 18,5 Lithuania 16,4 17,3 20,2 20,7 29,1 35,1 41,0 41,9 32,4 27,4 25,1 21,9 Luxembourg 17,2 20,8 22,6 25,2 27,9 29,4 24,1 27,3 23,4 24,8 20,7 13,9 continue Page 77

3 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dic Hungary 27,4 31,4 35,8 37,6 42,5 42,7 41,4 46,1 35,3 32,0 28,3 23,2 Malta 26,6 33,8 38,3 48,6 57,9 67,6 82,6 85,6 71,1 60,3 38,9 28,4 Netherlands 29,9 35,4 37,4 48,5 48,9 48,2 52,7 57,5 50,1 47,2 40,5 35,1 Austria 52,6 62,8 48,8 29,8 30,6 37,4 51,5 58,7 42,2 31,1 22,9 40,1 Poland 23,8 28,1 27,3 27,8 34,6 36,6 38,9 40,2 38,1 33,6 28,4 24,0 Portugal 21,5 27,2 30,6 36,5 39,4 42,9 53,0 64,7 50,6 39,8 25,9 22,4 Romania 15,5 17,5 18,4 20,9 27,4 29,6 29,6 35,7 29,5 27,8 25,7 19,0 Slovenia 34,9 37,8 32,4 35,0 38,4 43,4 55,0 62,4 45,0 38,4 30,0 29,6 Slovakia 21,1 26,3 23,6 22,8 25,7 28,1 32,8 35,1 28,8 25,9 21,5 18,5 Finland 32,6 38,0 40,9 36,1 32,0 40,3 55,2 44,0 38,4 36,7 34,8 33,9 Sweden 24,6 30,2 31,3 30,8 36,7 38,5 59,6 48,2 38,3 35,8 34,8 28,8 United Kingdom 27,0 36,0 36,0 43,0 48,0 53,0 59,0 59,0 55,0 50,0 41,0 36,0 Iceland 16,6 25,3 27,4 27,3 29,7 46,2 64,8 58,7 33,7 30,4 21,7 17,4 Liechtenstein 27,1 37,0 35,4 22,5 25,9 24,6 30,1 38,2 31,1 25,0 21,9 23,0 Norway 25,9 33,2 32,9 29,1 29,9 43,1 50,2 44,9 35,9 31,5 31,2 25,2 Switzerland 38,6 48,2 42,5 36,5 39,6 45,0 54,1 51,7 45,8 38,7 33,0 35,8 Montenegro n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. 50,5 n.d. n.d. 11,5 Croatia 14,8 19,2 21,0 29,5 41,2 60,8 89,5 94,5 63,4 31,0 20,8 15,4 1. THE ACCOMMODATION ESTABLISHMENTS IN ITALY In Italy there are a lot of accommodation establishments, in 2010 there were hotels and similar establishments, and of other accommodation facilities. Three stars hotels represent the largest percentage (fig. 1). Percentage of bed places for each accommodation facilities Other accomodation Hotel Percentage of accommodation facilities Other accomodation Hotel Figure1 - Hotels and similar establishments, 2010 and other accommodation, 2010 [17] Page 78

4 Five stars hotels constitute the lowest percentage, luxury hotels are not so spread over the territory, about the other accommodations, the most important are the rental apartments, then there are the bed and breakfast and the farmhouses holydays. Although, observing bed places, the percentage varies enormously, data show that the capacity of 4 stars hotels and 3 stars hotels is highest than other and among other establishments, camping and holyday villages have a lot of bed places, respect to the number of establishments, bed places are significant, probably because bed places are more concentrated in a few facilities. Rental apartments represent 23% of the bed places of other accommodation facilities, farmhouses holidays have more bed places than bed and breakfast. As the maps show (fig. 2), the most visited destinations have the 5 and 4 stars largest amount of bed places, so, the most expensive facilities, are spread in our provinces, more than 2-1 stars hotels. While the bed places of 3 stars hotels represent the highest percentage in Italy, they are significant in the North and in the Centre of Italy, in particular, in the South of Italy there are a lot of establishments, specifically in Calabria, Campania, Sicily and Apulia sea areas. The 2 and 1 stars hotels are less significant respect to other establishments, only in Rome, Bolzano, Trento, Rimini and Venice where the diversified supply is very important because of the significant touristic flows that these destinations receive. In the southern and central Italy the flows are not so much consistent. < > stars 3 stars and residence 2-1 stars Figure 2 - Bed places in all types of hotel structure [17] < > Camping/d holyday villages Rental houses Farmhouses Other structures Figure 3 - The other accommodation facilities in Italian provinces [17] Camping and holyday villages are located mainly on the coasts of Italy and in mountain areas (fig. 3). Camping sites used for overnight stay in the outdoor, correspond to a particular kind of holyday, this kind of structure is also cheap allowing young people to have an holyday. Generally, they aren t chosen for business Page 79

5 travel. The capacity of rental houses is highest in mountain areas, in central Italy and in the provinces of Olbia-Tempio (Sardinia) and Lecce (Apulia). Farmhouses are mostly widespread in Tuscany, it seems that the phenomenon of farmhouses had an important increase in the last year. It was born in Tuscany in years and have had a large increase in few years. There was an high growth of this kind of structure (G. Balestrieri, 2005). Other structures that comprehend bed and breakfast, hostels, alpine hut, holidays homes are most widespread in Aosta, Turin, Trento and Rome. There are some of these facilities in Northern and Central provinces, but the level is not significant such as other kind of establishments, before analyzed. 2. CLUSTER ANALYSIS RESULTS OF ITALIAN BED PLACES The bed occupancy in Italy is obtained by dividing of overnight stays by the number of bed places of hotels (five and four stars hotels, three stars hotels, two and one stars hotels and residences) and of other lodging (camping and holiday village, rental apartments, farmhouses holyday, other accommodation facilities). All data regard the year To analyze the best performances of accommodation facilities, we have used for the hierarchical cluster analysis the Ward s method (Ward's minimum variance method). Ward's method says that the distance between two clusters, A and B, is how much the sum of squares will increase when we merge them: [1] where is the center of cluster j; is the number of points in it. is called the merging cost of combining the clusters A and B. The dendrogram of cluster analysis shows clearly four clusters in both cases, consequently we have selected these clusters and the analysis proves that the occupancy of bed places in the three types of hotels is more uniform for the fourth cluster. The selected accommodation facilities for the cluster analysis are: nights spent for bed places in 5-4 stars hotels, in 3 stars hotels/residences and in 2-1 stars hotels. The fourth cluster includes countries such as Bolzano, Genoa, Imperia, La Spezia, Milan, Padua, Piacenza, Prato, Rome, Venice, Verona. In this cluster the nights spent for bed place in 5-4 stars hotels are over 136; bed places in 3 stars hotels and residences are used from 114 to 170 nights; and bed places in 2-1 stars hotels are used 110 nights in average. The individuated provinces are the most visited by tourist arrivals, except some of these, such as Prato. This town could be considered a particular case, where also the nationality of tourists is atypical. It seems that the major country of origin of international tourists is China (about 24 %), probably also because of the presence of immigrated people in this dynamic province. Also Genoa, Imperia and La Spezia, are not among the most visited provinces but in the Ligurian Riviera there is not only a beautiful coast, in these territories are organized a lot of important events as Sanremo. In the third cluster the occupancy results characterized from 63 to 136 night for bed places in 5-4 stars hotels; from about 46 to 120 nights spent in 3 stars hotels and residences and from 47 to 86 nights spent for bed places of 2 and 1 stars hotels. The third cluster that concerns hotel bed occupancy results constituted by 49 provinces. In this group there are a lot of sea provinces of southern Italy, all Apulia provinces, a big part of Sicily, Sardinia and two Calabrian provinces: Catanzaro and Vibo Valentia. Central provinces are in the third cluster except a few cases. Also the East part of northern Italy is significantly present in third cluster. The second cluster formed by 19 provinces for the first group of bed places has in average 62 nights spent, for the 3 stars hotels and residences comprehend from 37 to 86 nights for bed and the last group has in average 27 nights. This cluster comprehends the remaining part of Sardinia, Sicily and Calabria. Few provinces in the North West completes this group. Page 80

6 The first cluster formed by 30 provinces is characterized by this occupancy: for 5-4 stars hotels, the nights spent for bed goes from 63 to 163 nights, the second category considered goes from 77 to 123 nights, the third comprehends from 46 to 222 nights. This cluster results very difficult to examine, because of this big range of values. This dissimilarity means that we cannot consider these provinces as the worst performances, these are in the first cluster because there are very good performances in one kind of structure and don t have the same good performances for the other accommodation facilities. Observing the values regarding the provinces belonging to this cluster, generally, they have more nights spent for bed places in the 5-4 stars hotels, medium performances in the third and not good in the 2-1 stars hotels. BZ SO BL VB AO VA CO TN PN LC BG BS BI VCNO MB MI VR VI TV PD VE TO LO CR MN PV RO AT AL PC PR FE REMOBO CN SV IM SS UD GO TS GE RA SPMS LUPT FC PO RN FI PU PI AR AN SI PG MC LI AP FM GR TR TE VT RI PE AQ CH RM CB FR IS FG OT NU OR OG VS CA CI LT PA CE BN BAT AV BA NA TA PZ SA MT CS CZ VV ME RC KR BR LE TP AG EN CT CL RG SR Cluster 1 Cluster 2 Cluster 3 Cluster 4 Figure 4 - Map of four clusters regarding occupancy of hotels and similar establishments. The cluster analysis considers the bed occupancy in camping and holiday village, rental apartments, farmhouses, other accommodation facilities (bed and breakfast, hostels, alpine hut, holidays homes). The dendrogram also in this case shows four evident groups. Observing occupancy distribution in the considered accommodation facilities, emerges that in the fourth and in the third clusters there are mainly the northern provinces of Italy, while provinces of the South and Centre of the Country are part of cluster 1 and 2. The nights spent for each bed places in the cluster 4, are in average 40 for the camping and villages, the occupancy for each bed places of rental houses is 89 nights in average; for what concerns farmhouses the range is nights and the occupancy in other establishments is about 100 nights in average. Performances of occupancy are quite good for all kind of these facilities. This cluster includes eleven Page 81

7 provinces, in which the Ligurian Riviera with Genoa, Savona and Imperia, shows again good performances such as in hotels occupancy (in particular data show high occupancy of bed places in rental houses with respect to other Italian provinces). Provinces of Florence, Siena, Pisa and Prato, in Tuscany, are included in this cluster, they have significant occupancy in farmhouses (very important phenomenon in the last years). Regarding the third cluster, in camping and villages the nights spent for each bed places go from 35 to 99 nights, in rental houses in average tourists spent 62 nights for bed places, 44 in farmhouses and 22 in other structures. The third cluster is very interesting because in this group are included in particular the provinces situated in the North-East of Italy, so the regions involved are Trentino-Alto-Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Veneto, Emilia Romagna and Lombardy. In the centre of Italy there are only Grosseto, La Spezia, Livorno that belong to the third cluster and in the South of Italy: Naples, Salerno and Avellino. BZ SO BL VB AO VA CO TN PN LC BG BS BI VCNO MB MI VR VI TV PD VE TO LO CR MN PV RO AT AL PC PR FE REMOBO CN SV IM SS UD GO TS GE RA SPMS LU PT FC PO RN FI PU PI AR AN SI PG MC LI AP FM GR TR TE VT RI PE AQ CH OT NU OR OG VS CA CI RM LT FR PA IS CB FG CE BN BAT AV BA NA TA PZ SA MT CS CZ VV ME RC KR BR LE TP AG EN CT CL RG SR Cluster 1 Cluster 2 Cluster 3 Cluster 4 Figure 5 - Map of four clusters regarding occupancy of other accommodation facilities. In the second cluster in camping and holyday villages are spent 19 nights in average (from 0 to 58 nights), 16 nights in average (from 0 to 41) in rental houses, 10 in average in farmhouses (from 0 to 26) and 16 in average in other structure (from 7 to 33). It seems that in the second cluster are included the provinces of South-West and Centre of the Country. Observing the map, emerges that all Calabria s provinces are situated in this cluster, Nuoro and Oristano for Sardinia while, in the first there are Adriatic provinces and other territories located in the North West of Italy. Apulia, Basilicata, Abruzzi and Molise are in the first clusters with a lot of provinces in Piedmont, Lombardy and Valle d Aosta. This cluster comprehends, 51 provinces, in average tourists spend 31 nights for each bed place in camping and holyday villages (from 5 to 61); 53 nights in average (from 18 to 148) for rental houses; 29 nights for farmhouses (from 0 to 63) and 29 Page 82

8 nights (from 4,8 to 68) for other accommodation facilities. It seems that the values of this cluster, in some cases, are higher than second cluster. CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, the analysis of European context bring up the fact that Italy, despite it s important role in term of tourists arrivals, has not an adequate bed places occupancy. The net occupancy rate provided by Eurostat doesn t consider the period in which accommodation facilities are closed, so Italy have not an adequate occupancy of bed-places in respect to other countries, also in the period of highest concentration. In these sense the investigation about the distribution in the territories of hotel and other collective establishments underlines a large amount of bed places, don t correspond to occupancy. For what concerns the hotels distribution in provinces, there isn t the same presence of 5-4 stars hotels, 3 stars hotels and 2-1 stars hotels. There isn t quite diversification of accommodation facilities because of the lack of 2-1 stars hotels. The first and the second groups of accommodation facilities are spread, but the report bring out the fact that there is the highest levels of concentration of these facilities on the coast and in the North-East of Italy. For what regards the other accommodation facilities, the camping and holyday villages are situated on the coast, while rental houses are located in the North-East of the Country and in central provinces. Farmhouses are strongly concentrated in Tuscany and some provinces in the North West and North East of countries. According to the results of cluster analysis, the occupancy in terms of 5-4 stars hotels, 3 stars hotels and 2-1 stars hotels in Italian provinces is highest in the most visited destinations, the third group of provinces is situated in cost areas and it s relatively uniform, different performances emerge in the North West of Italy where the heterogeneity of occupancy is so significant (cluster 1-2). A different occupancy concerns other collective establishments: camping and holiday villages, rental apartments, farmhouses holyday and other accommodation facilities (bed and breakfast, hostels, alpine hut, holidays homes). The North and Centre of Italy have good and more similar occupancy of these accommodation facilities, the second and the first cluster comprehend most of the provinces of Southern Italy (except Avellino and Salerno), some of the central provinces and most of territories in the North West of Italy. Also, for these establishments, emerges the importance of North-Eastern area of Italy that is a particularly developed areas, with a lot of services. The analysis bring out the fact that a lot of provinces, despite the quantity of hotels and other accommodation facilities, have not an adequate occupancy. Probably these levels are correlated to the seasonality of tourism. First of all sea areas are conditioned by the climate, so the accommodation in these territories are used only in summer. Moreover, the concentration only in 3 months of the year, make it necessary to have a lot of bed places, that are used also for brief periods and in the rest of the year are vacant. The attractiveness of italian areas could be increased in other periods and not only in summer, through events, and an adequate marketing of territories, in this way the occupancy level could also be more. BIODATA - Valentina FERRI is PhD student at University of Bari, Via G. Toma 59 Bari, Italy. - Giuseppe LOLLO is PhD student at University of Bari, Via Vittorio Veneto 19, S.Agata Militello (ME), Italy. REFERENCES 1. Balestrieri G., Il turismo rurale nello sviluppo territoriale integrato della Toscana, IRPET e REGIONE TUSCANY, Candela G., Figini P., Economia del turismo, Milano, McGraw-Hill, Ciccarelli S., Pavone R., Tecnologia E Turismo - In Celant A., Ferri M.A. L'italia. Il Declino Economico E La Forza Del Turismo - Marchesi Grafiche Editoriali, Roma, Page 83

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