Siena is experiencing a real tourist boom. According to the data presented during the City Council, presences and arrivals in the historic center throughout 2023 have doubled compared to 2019. The tourism councilor Vanna Giunti responded to the question from the Democratic Party councilor, Alessandro Masi , which illustrated in detail the meaning and quality of the data collected: “Presences and arrivals in accommodation rented for tourist purposes have practically doubled compared to 2019”, declared Giunti. These data were collected by the Municipality’s statistics office, which conducts monthly surveys regarding the “Movement of customers in accommodation establishments” and the “Capacity of accommodation establishments”. The investigations involve over six thousand accommodation facilities in the province and are carried out rigorously on the data provided by the facilities themselves, through two applications: MotouristOffice and Ricestat.
The applications, created by Connectis Web of Prato, are accredited in the Tuscany Region and meet the requirements of the Istat algorithm. In addition to the monthly flow survey, the tourism statistics service carries out quality checks and sends the results to the Tuscany Region. As underlined by Giunti, “the reliability of the statistical analyzes is based on a very low level of non-compliance and high levels of data quality”.
The councilor also explained that the analyzes take place only on the official data of the accommodation facilities. To bring out the hidden nature of tourist rentals, the “Ragno” system was used, which cross-references data from platforms such as Airbnb with that of the regional database. This system allows you to verify that the rentals are in compliance with the communications required by regional legislation and, if not, apply the foreseen sanctions.
The 2019 data were used as the reference year because they were comparable with the new tourist offer that emerged subsequently: “2019 was year zero,” explained Giunti, “a comparison with 2018 was not possible since the sizes were not homogeneous”. The Province of Siena was a pioneer in the publication of data on tourist rentals, a project which was then extended to other capital municipalities of the region.
However, councilor Alessandro Masi expressed dissatisfaction with the councilor’s response. “The question asked not to confuse the data on incoming tourism with that on private tourist rentals, as indicated by Istat,” declared Masi. “I recommend a separation in this sense to allow a dynamic analysis of the phenomenon of tourist rental, which does not represent the main reception objective of the tourist accommodation system of our city”.
However, the comparison highlighted the importance of precise and differentiated strategic planning for the future of tourism in Siena and its province. As the city celebrates a significant increase in tourist numbers, crucial questions are also emerging about how to manage and sustain this influx so that the benefits are equitably distributed and long-lasting.
