Nature, Tourism, Growth, Resilience and Sustainable Development

Abstract

This perspective article takes into account several previous studies focusing on the relations between territorial resources, tourism dynamics, economic performance (both in terms of growth and resilience), sustainable development and smart specialization in a large number of European regions. Supported by different methodologies, the results of different international comparative analysis and an individual case-study are used in order to define and to investigate the particular relations between natural features of the territories and their utilization for tourism purposes, along with different types of impacts. Revealing that Southern European regions are mostly following strategies of cost-leadership based on the provision of mass tourism products and services with low value-added, the results of these works also show that the long-term economic benefits of this type of path-dependence evolution are limited, both in terms of economic growth and also in terms of the socio-economic resilience of these regions when facing negative external shocks. In particular, the high importance of the tourism sector within regional processes of specialization makes them especially vulnerable both to the impacts of overtourism and no-tourism. Possible strategies for diversification of the regional economic structures are discussed, taking into account the current conditions of regional development.