L’impatto delle produzioni cinematografiche sul turismo. Il caso de “Il commissario Montalbano” per la provincia di Ragusa

Abstract: The paper analyzes the impact of the detective Montalbano television series on tou-rism in Ragusa province. We collected ISTAT data on arrivals and presences of Italians and foreigners from 1990 to 2008, in order to obtain the touristic density index (=arrivals of tour-ists/area of the considered territory) and the touristic specialization index (=touristic presences/number of residents) for the new touristic development index by Forte and Manto-vani, which is conceived to measure the “touristicness” degree of given territories in compari-son with others as benchmark. This index corresponds to the arithmetic average of the above mentioned indices. The results of this statistical analysis have been related to the “touristic fash-ion cycle” built on the lines of Forte and Mantovani “fashion cycle”. A little but significant ef-fect emerges because, since 2000, the province of Ragusa showed a differential touristic devel-opment in relation to the touristic flows in Sicily, if compared with the period before the fiction production. Therefore, Montalbano television series has had a positive effect on Ragusan tour-ism. In 2007 the upward trend exhibits an interruption. In fact, the index has a downturn, alt-hough it is lower than the regional and the national ones. Thus, the economic-financial crisis did not remove the differentials emerged after the year 1999. Ragusan tourism resists during this crisis period because it has become a “classical product” (according to the Forte and Mantovani “fashion cycle” classification). The research has also considered the factors needed to obtain positive results by regional policies for cine-tourism promotion.