The economic resilience of tourism industry in Italy: What the ‘great recession’ data show

• The tourism industry in Italy during the ‘Great recession’ (2008–12) is analyzed.
• The issue of economic resilience is used to analyze the different reactions.
• Resilience indices of tourism sectors for the Italian regions are computed.
• Possible reasons for the different reactions across regions are suggested.

The purpose of this article is to describe the evolution of tourism industry in Italy during the recent years of the so-called ‘Great recession’ (2008–12). We highlight the most prominent features of the changes that occurred in both the demand and the supply side of the tourism industry, over these years, focusing on the differences across regions, kinds of destination, and categories of accommodation. The issue of “resilience” is used to explain the different degrees of success responding to the national adverse shock hitting the industry. We compute an index to capture the economic resilience of tourism sector in the Italian regions, and propose an exploratory analysis to understand its relation with structural characteristics and strategies across regions. Our interpretation is that deep structural changes in the demand and supply side of the tourism industry, rather than specific adjustments, have occurred in these years of recession.