Sea Italy: Sicily and the Venetian Riviera, Completely Different Demand

The Sicilian coasts and the Venetian Riviera are the most distant tourist products in our country, not only geographically but also in market characteristics.

Italian beach tourism has always been, and remains even in the post-Covid era, the most significant segment of the national market. Italy is known for its art cities and its invaluable artistic heritage. However, it is on the beaches that the majority of tourists flock during the high season.

Analyzing all Italian beach tourism as if it were a homogeneous whole is a common and recurrent mistake: due to geographic characteristics, offerings, and the identities of the places, our seaside destinations are profoundly different from each other, a difference that influences, every day, the work of those in the tourism industry.

It’s easy to say sea!

From north to south along the peninsula, the coasts continue uninterrupted, forming a puzzle (not quite well-defined) of tourist destinations of all kinds. In terms of tourism economy, about sixty different beach products can be identified, each with its own history, natural characteristics, and market structure. No two are the same: some have a tourism history that dates back to the late 19th century, such as Versilia, while others have been “discovered” more recently, like Salento; some operate almost exclusively for the Italian and family tourism market; others are strongly tied to foreign markets and mainly attract couples. A mix of many different variables (including the way vacations are experienced) that makes each seaside destination’s market different from others.

Venetian Riviera vs Sicily!

The Venetian Riviera and the Northern Coast of Sicily are the most famous beach destinations in these two distant Italian regions. Jesolo and San Vito lo Capo represent two entirely different tourism products, differences that also influence their future prospects.

To highlight these differences, data from the Zucchetti Travel Data Lake were analyzed, representing tourists’ travel intentions and thus the demand pressure on the territories.

The data, collected in real-time, reflect lodging searches made from May 1st to July 31st for stays in August-September 2022.

The first major difference between the two destinations is that we are talking about totally different volumes: lodging searches for the Venetian Riviera are about four times higher than those for Sicily. The reasons favoring the Venetian Riviera are mainly to be found in its geographic location: it is very close not only to the major demand generators of Northern Italy but also to national borders, making the destination particularly accessible from neighboring countries. Accessibility, on the other hand, is exactly the weak point of Sicily. This, along with historical factors, causes the Sicilian destination to have a foreign market share of only 28%, compared to 68% for Veneto.

The ratio between Italian and foreign tourists directly reflects the homogeneity of demand: considering the check-in dates selected by tourists, we see that in both cases demand is (naturally) declining with the arrival of autumn, but in the Riviera it is significantly more uniform and remains strong until mid-September. On the Sicilian coast, instead, most of the demand concentrates around Ferragosto and drops immediately at the end of the month.

It should be said, however, that in Sicily demand is geographically better distributed: on the Venetian Riviera, most of the demand centers on Jesolo and San Michele al Tagliamento; while on the Northern Coast of the island, the demand is spread across all seaside locations. Furthermore, during this period (May 1st – July 31st), demand for the Sicilian coast grew by +3.2%; compared to +2.1% for the Venetian coast.

Finally, looking at search clusters, we see that for both, the dominant market segment is couples, but for the Venetian Riviera, family tourism has a more significant weight. In particular, Palermo, Geraci, and Favignana are the Sicilian destinations with high couple demand; while Cavallino-Treporti and San Michele al Tagliamento are the most popular destinations for families.