Sustainability and governance on the Romagnola Adriatic coast. The case of slow sport tourism

The proposed paper offers a reflection on some tourist resorts along the Romagnola Adriatic Coast that, in the current social-cultural contest, must renovate for newer and more competitive offers. It has been shown the necessity of a “tourism governance” capable of creating an integrated and sustainable product that ties seaside tourism to other unique sites of the territory, as suggested by the Action Plan of the Macro Regione Adriatico Ionica. In this way the analysis focalizes on slow sport tourism as giving life to an offer wary of the particular environmental sustainability in harmony with the territory.  The research concerns a more and more tighter relationship arising between sport and tourism on the Adriatic Coast of Romagna: aimed at analysing the businesses that have developed their services basing on the peculiarity of their offer. In particular, the businesses creating a strong bond between seaside tourism and sport were taken into consideration, as this sector has gathered a wide consensus in the region increasing, at the same time, its turnover. Such types of tourism typically requires a strong territorial organisation and several actors committing themselves in making proposals in which transport, hotel capacity, culinary, sport services and marketing are simultaneously interacting. As such, it cannot be an unsustainable tourism, not only regarding the local available resources, but also, or in particular, the managing skills of the local system. The environment becomes, in turn, the main resource underlying every tourist marketing action, since sport – in particular slow sport - has always been associated with the primary resource in which the territory identifies itself. On the base of these environmental characters, the local structure has remarkably developed and a series of sport facilities have been “designed” inside a particular habitat. The phase of field research was based on the application of mixed methods, forseeing a plausable and proficuous integration betwen quantitative, qualitative and visual data, with the intention to investigate the phenomenon with different points of view to obtein more knolwledge of different nature. In this context a case study will be proposed concerning in particular the integration betwen qualitative procedures: second level analisies documents have been integrated with participant observation of the researcher and with photo elicitation interviews. The area has been aiming for the development of sport tourism, in particular slow sport tourism, as it is able to do this, which coupled with seaside tourism, thanks to its environmental and territorial characteristics, as well as the structural ones created over the decades, and, last but not least, the local tourist entrepreneurs. The value added through the development of slow sport tourism - with prospects of further development - consists in the fact that it mostly exploits the existing potentialities of the area, without modifying or perturbing anything, but barely re-inventing and re-qualifying the territory. A sustainable tourist development is guaranteed, through which the existing resources are employed in the best possible ways. Collaborations and networks between the different tourist entrepreneurs should be constantly encouraged and oriented towards non-individualistic policies based on the principles of co-management and the sharing of a common asset: a more and more sport-tourist offer, which is also more and more responsible in terms of resources and development. As this is about a common asset of great importance, public decision makers should obviously attain a crucial role, subsidizing such offer and getting more responsible in particular on a local level. Their discriminatory and mediation ability should be targeted at guaranteeing that any organised sport activity and all events ensure and stimulate the safeguard of the urban fabric, of the social and cultural balance created over the years, and, above all, the genius loci without which the territory would not be able to become “a place of sport and seaside tourism”.