Abstract
The present chapter investigates the resilience of Alpine destinations regarding the COVID-19 pandemic through the quantitative analysis of tourism flows. Exhibiting organizational tendencies of community-type destinations like most of the Alpine destinations (Flagestad & Hope, 2001), the geographic focus of the chapter lies on the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol, located in the Italian Alps. By quantitatively examining the monthly overnights from 1990 to 2022 and their distribution among the different accommodation structures, the chapter provides insights regarding the structural changes, considering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent recovery of the tourism flows. The pandemic, which started its disruptive impact as a shock, became a long-term stressor due to its prolonged effects (Duro et al., 2022; Lew, 2014; Walker et al., 2012). Tourism destination systems necessitate to shift their attention from resilience in terms of categorical preservation of the system’s equilibrium and structure (also referred to as “Engineering Resilience” or “Hard Resilience”), to resilience in terms of gradual systemic adaptation (also referred as “Ecological Resilience” or “Soft Resilience”) (Holling, 1996; Proag, 2014) as well as considering the hysteretic impacts of disruptions and their effects on the system’s development path (Bangwayo-Skeete & Skeete, 2021). The chapter also examines changes in the South Tyrolean accommodation sector’s overall structural composition in terms of their potential connection to the pandemic effects.