An Overview of Tourism Seasonality: Key Concepts and Policies

• Main Author: Rita Cannas
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Bologna 2012-08-01
• Series: Almatourism
• Subjects: tourism seasonality; tourism spatiality; seasonality measurements; tourism policy
• Online Access: http://almatourism.unibo.it/article/view/3120

Seasonality in tourism represents a key topic in academic literature. Since the first study of BarOn (1975) about tourism seasonality, this topic is still currently being tackled over decades by several authors, as well as by policy makers of the tourism sector. The purpose of the study[1], rather than representing an exhaustive and complete framework of a wide field of study such as seasonality in tourism, is to explore the main characteristics of this phenomenon (causes, impacts, spatiality and temporality, measurements) and to focus the attention on policies and strategies in order to highlight how and in which ways tourism destinations can modify tourism seasonality’s feature. If the rather more common perspective adopted is that seasonality presents business challenges to a destination and to individual operators, it is a crucial aim of this literature review the attempt to point out the main features of these challenges and to provide a rational framework for the tourism seasonality researches.    [1] The paper is drawn from: Cannas, R. (2010) Public Policies for tourism seasonality from a territorial perspective. Cases study in Scotland and Sardinia, PhD thesis, University of Bologna, Department of Economics, unpublished.