In the 19th and 20th centuries, manufacturing production served not only an economic function, but also created communities: it attracted workers, created a foundation for families and made schools, services and infrastructure sustainable. Its gradual decline, first in major urban centres and then beyond national borders, has left structural effects on villages and inland areas: loss of economic and social attractiveness, depopulation and the progressive neglect of buildings with extraordinary architectural and landscape significance. Not only are these properties prohibitively expensive to redevelop, but physical regeneration alone is not sufficient. Restoring a building to its former glory does not restore life to a territory if it lacks community and economic attractiveness. The issue then is not whether tourism can contribute to the revival of these areas, but which form of tourism is capable today of replacing the function once carried out by industry. A concrete answer exists but only if tourism stops consuming places and learns to inhabit them.
Transit tourism vs. presence tourism
The starting point is a distinction that is often overlooked. Brief and sporadic streams of visitors can strain destinations, leading to overtourism, but they seldom warrant substantial investments or effectively help restore the local economy. Longer stays, even if temporary, on the other hand, impact the territory in a way that is similar to residency: they generate stable demand, employment, the continuous use of real estate and economic relationships that do not end with the season or within a single day. It is a form of presence that leaves a trace.
Alternative hospitality as a structural response
It is within this intermediate space that alternative hospitality takes shape: residential units located in villages and historic centres, renovated and managed in a unified and professional manner, intended for longer stays than those typical of a hotel, yet not equivalent to traditional residency. Not occasional letting, not a regulatory shortcut: rather, a model that captures a growing demand for “hybrid” stays, linked to remote work (the widespread phenomenon of digital nomads), transitional periods and forms of slow tourism that are increasingly common among families and older people.
Compared to traditional hotels, this model presents structural advantages. Large-scale hotel hospitality is an industrial machine that requires volume, standardised spaces and workforce organisation that smaller centres are often unable to sustain, either economically or from an urban planning perspective. Professionally managed residential hospitality, by contrast, allows the preservation of local morphological typologies, with lower investment levels and an impact compatible with fragile urban fabrics and buildings that are sometimes subject to heritage constraints. In this context, management, more than ownership, becomes the decisive factor in transforming abandoned real estate assets into drivers of territorial development.
From an employment perspective, the model necessitates skills that are more readily available beyond major urban centres: in areas where structural labour shortages persist, this is particularly significant and may stimulate economic activity without relying on conditions that the territory is not yet prepared to provide.
There is also a less immediate but strategically relevant effect. Medium to long-term stays tend to transform a portion of guests, and those employed in the sector, into potential new residents. Repopulation does not occur by decree: it is rebuilt through gradual forms of presence that precede and prepare for stable settlement. From this perspective, hospitality does not oppose residency; it becomes a precondition for it.
Not all guests are the same
These forms of hospitality are often equated with short-term rentals that have turned many apartments in historic city centres into bed and breakfasts, with widely documented negative effects. This equation is misleading. When professional operators intervene to redevelop and manage entire buildings according to a structured model, rather than individual units (which are too complex to renovate and manage, also due to necessary interactions with residents or less professional operators), the picture changes radically. These forms of settlement-oriented hospitality contribute to the regeneration of villages and historic centres that have been overrun and distorted by hit-and-run tourism, redistribute flows, ease pressure on saturated destinations and expand the territorial offering without generating new social costs. Overtourism arises where there is a lack of planning, management and long-term vision.
A matter of vision
Hospitality can become a new driver of development for villages, inland areas, and historic centres – but only if it stops being conceived as mere accommodation and begins to be designed as a tool for developing communities. The difference is not semantic: it is a matter of vision that determines the quality of interventions, the durability of their effects, and their compatibility with places. Operators and investors who have already made this shift, and measure value not by the number of passers-by but by the quality and duration of stays, aren’t just building a more solid business model: they are restoring a future to places where it may have been lost.
For further reading:
LUIGI BALESTRA, MARCO DUGATO, and GIUSEPPE PIPERATA (eds.), “Attractiveness of Villages and the Recovery of the Building Heritage for Residential and Tourism Purposes, Between Ownership and Consumption”, Cacucci Editore, Bari, 2026, 490 pp.
In particular:
- On the risks of overtourism, touristification, and loss of residential function: Emanuele Boscolo (p. 39 ff.).
- On the distinction between episodic initiatives and structured regeneration models: Roberto Carleo (p. 77 ff.).
- On the role of sustainable tourism and real estate asset management in villages: Silvia Romanò (p. 431 ff.).
