Regional Law Defines Tourism Municipalities and Provincial Application Requirements

According to the new regional law, Municipalities with a tourism economy are those located in mountainous, coastal (i.e., seaside), lacustrine areas, or where thermal bath facilities are present. Additionally, they must also have at least one thousand five hundred beds in hotel or non-hotel structures.

Responsibilities of the Province and required documentation

The Province is responsible for identifying the tourist municipalities, and it is to this entity that the various administrations must annually submit a specific application to obtain an exemption from sales hours regulations.

The documentation must include the ratio between the resident population and the number of overnight stays in hotel establishments, the ratio between tourism enterprises and the number of employees, and the ratio between the total number of enterprises and the number of employees across the entire municipal territory.

Also relevant are the presence of conference facilities, and the application must include opinions from the most representative organizations at the provincial level in the tourism and commercial sectors, as well as workers’ and consumers’ groups and the opinion of the relevant Tourism Promotion Company.

Produced statistics and activity confirmation

To verify all this, the various administrations can submit statistical data demonstrating annual tourism activity, even if only seasonal (a.t.).