Competitiveness and sustainability in alpine destinations: the opportunities opened by integrating agriculture and tourism

The main current challenge for tourism destinations is to innovate and differentiate offer and products in order to meet the new segments interested in authentic holiday experiences. The integration of tourism and agriculture offers interesting opportunities, especially to traditional destinations needing to renew their offer. The paper underlines the importance of managerial and governance choices in multi-stakeholder contexts and sets them within the wider debate about management for destinations’ sustainability and competitiveness. The main research question is whether or not this intersectorial integration can give Alpine destinations a sustainable competitive advantage. Using a supply-side analysis based on desk analysis, we examine the dairy and cheese-making sector in Alto Adige/Südtirol and, using a qualitative method, establish whether and how landscape, specific local resources and mountain products can be valorised by intersectorial integration. From a managerial point of view results show that the integration of agriculture and tourism works effectively when three enabling factors are present: 1) a coordinating territorial meta-management organization which is involved in the governance of the destination, and ensures consistency with the objectives of the government body; 2) public-private partnerships which stimulate top-down and bottom-up relationships, support entrepreneurial initiatives and contribute to the development of the local tourism offer; 3) the promotion of authentic local traditions, identity and culture. Positive effects are thus generated by intersectorial integration both in the destination development and in targeting the new tourism demand