Inner areas and UNESCO world heritage: What possible convergences?

This paper constitutes an exploratory study about the possible relationships between Inner Areas and World Heritage Sites in Italy. For each pilot project area individuated by SNAI, it was designed a potential tourism gravitational basin, by taking into account the average yearly nights spent of all the neighboring provinces with WHS endowments, for the 12-year period 2005-2016. General results show that the central-northern pilot areas are more willing to intercept cultural heritage flows, while the majority of southern areas are significantly far from possible convergences with UNESCO place markers. Descriptive statistics and synthetic cartographic representation of potential tourism gravitational basins are provided, policy implications are discussed.