The Management of Holiday Homes: the Point of View of Tourists and The Role of Real Estate Agencies

This work summarizes the results of a field survey aimed at tourists who have spent a holiday period staying in a private home (owned or rented) and real estate agencies operating in the area in the field of holiday property market . The research concerned tourism in a Calabrian seaside town in the south of Italy, a place of significant tourist-seaside and cultural interest. The territorial field of investigation was restricted to that in which the phenomenon in question appeared to be most present. Therefore, in these areas of the city it was decided to carry out direct interviews with tourists (about five hundred), carried out in the summer period (August-September), who were given a questionnaire organized into topics that allowed to explore different dimensions of the holiday in a private home (behavior, motivations, choices, costs, etc.). With regard to real estate agencies, all those present in the city were contacted, and this for the purpose of deepening the mechanisms that govern the phenomenon of tourism of second homes in the city. With respect to the main results of the research, it can however be anticipated that, as in other cases, even in the case of the research activities in question, it has been concluded that the holiday in a private home does not represent an alternative choice to a stay at hotel accommodation facilities. Or non-hotel, but a real preference. Furthermore, the results reached indicate that the role of real estate agencies could be important for the development of tourism in holiday homes and its market visibility, but, to date, it remains a marginal role, however, in a situation in which most of the market sees, both in sales and in rentals, the direct relationship between tourists and owners of holiday homes as protagonists. In fact, the work represents analyzes that can be of current use to those who deal with the issue in question.