Firm Demography in the Accommodation Industry. Evidence from Italian Insular Regions

The purpose of this study is to analyze the spatial pattern and the post-entry performance of tourism businesses in the Italian insular regions of Sardinia and Sicily. Using geo-referenced micro-data for the period 2011–2014, we explore the spatial distribution of accommodation firms in the two insular regions and then compare the coastal and inland areas of the two regions. We observe a higher dispersion of firms in Sardinia than in Sicily; the latter, however, having a higher concentration of firms in coastal and urban areas. We do not find significant differences in survival probability across the two insular regions, but we do detect significant differences between coastal and inland areas in Sicily.