Sustainable industrial tourism: an in-depth analysis of the Italian landscape

Industrial areas have traditionally been approached from an engineering perspective, prioritising design, efficiency, and sustainability. However, abandoned industrial sites are often overlooked. Recently, Industrial Tourism (InT) has emerged, promoting both disused and operative industrial sites as alternative tourist destinations. This paper catalogs and analyses 200 InT sites in Italy, applying sustainable tourism criteria defined by the United Nations World Tourism Organization. The study, following three main Research Questions, provides a detailed analysis of the Italian InT landscape, identifying promising development paths. Results show that 67% of the sites are disused plants, on average renovated for tourism in the 2000s, offering mainly exhibitions (74%) and guided tours (61%), focusing primarily on industrial (80%) and secondarily on artistic field (23%). The aims of these sites are knowledge of the past (90%), recovery and development of surrounding areas (68%), and promotion (64%). Economic and social sustainability dimensions are widely present, while environmental, managerial, governance, and infrastructure dimensions show greater variation. The geographical distribution of sites reveals a higher concentration of InT in Northern Italy (69%), particularly in Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, and Piedmont. Future initiatives should focus on expanding Industrial Tourism in Southern Italy and investing in environmental interventions to align with sustainable tourism goals.