Sustainable Nautical Tourism: A Framework to Support Port’s Planning

Sustainability covers different topics and challenges at the global level. Coastal environments are influenced by the port’s activities and relative users. Amongst coastal activities, the paper focuses on nautical tourism. Although marine and nautical tourism constitutes an opportunity for the economic development of a territory, it is important to consider the other components of sustainability: social and environmental. For reaching an equilibrium amongst all components, it is necessary to adopt a planning approach to identify the right of quality and quantity of touristic ports in a coastal region. This paper proposes a modelling framework for estimating the quantity of nautical berths in relation to some territorial variables. The main results of the framework’s application are presented for the Italy case study. The framework and the obtained results are useful for private and public decision-makers involved in the sustainable marine tourism processes.