“Marketing Strategies for Top Italian Museums: The Influence of Province Destination Competitiveness”

Museums are closely connected with the tourism destinations in which they are placed; yet, the link between museum and destination has been quite neglected by researchers to date. This contribution is a first attempt to address this gap, with regard to the Italian context. The paper is designed to investigate most popular Italian museums together with the destination competitiveness of the provinces where these museums are located. From research findings it is possible to classify most popular Italian museums in four cluster categories, according to their number of visitors and the level of competitiveness of their provinces of reference. The differences in the destination competitiveness of the provinces where top Italian museums are located enable the elaboration of specific strategies for museums and the tourism industry for each identifiable cluster, valuable to both academics and museum managers.