Italian Hospitality and Albergo Diffuso Sara d’Urso1 1. Italy’s Hospitality in Numbers; 2. The Origins and Evolution of Hospitality in Italy; 3. The Origins and Relevance of Albergo Diffuso; 4. The Discipline of Albergo Diffuso; 5. The Contractual Relationship between Hotelier and Customer; 6. Conclusions. 1. ITALY’S HOSPITALITY IN NUMBERS In Italy, tourism produces more than 5% of GDP, and over 6% of the country’s employees work in tourism2. Moreover, in 2016, concerning overnight stays, Italy ranked third in Europe, after Spain and France, having grown at a 6% rate compared to the previous year. The Italian hotel system occupies a leading position in the world regarding the number of rooms available, ranking fourth after the USA, China and Japan, but ahead of Germany and Spain. However, the growth in the number of available rooms is not among the highest, with only 0.8%. Consequently, considering only the European perimeter, here too, Italian hospitality is a leader in terms of size for quantity of establishments and number of rooms (in 2015, 16.4% of the entire EU market) and for the quality of proposals of the highestranking categories3. Accordingly, the Italian accommodation offer is around 178.4 thousand accommodation establishments, of which 18.6% (about 33 thousand) is hotel establishments, with mid-range hotels in first position (15 thousand). The remaining 81,4% are from complementary businesses (145 thousand), of which over half is represented by rental accommodation (approximately 81 thousand). In 2015, it was already clear that hotels were the minority – albeit slightly (46%) – compared to non-hotel facilities. This heralded the now- 1 Università di Milano-Bicocca. 2 Questioni di economia e finanza. Turismo in Italia: numero e potenziale sviluppo (Matters of economics and finance. Tourism in Italy: numbers and development potential), in Occasional papers, n. 5050, Banca d’Italia, July 2017, p. 7. 3 Ottavo rapporto sul sistema alberghiero e turistico ricettivo in Italia (Eighth report on the hotel and tourist accommodation system in Italy), 2017, pp. 9 et seq., in www.federalberghi.it.
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