La politica ambientale nel comparto turistico tra benefici e criticità: un caso di studio.

This work focuses on the issue of the environmental sustainability of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) operating in the tourism sector. It first analyzes the most relevant environmental labeling schemes (i.e. Ecolabel, EMAS and ISO 14.001) used by the firms operating in tourism hospitality. Furthermore, it reports the results of a field work run in the territorial area of the province of Foggia (Southern Italy) in February 2014 when a sample of locally operating SMEs was investigated with the aim of observing the benefits and competitive advantages they eventually gain from approaching the Ecolabel scheme but also the costs they bear for doing so. Although 67% of the firms interviewed refers to have received some benefits from the adhesion to the above-mentioned scheme, the remaining - however statistically relevant - 33% of the firms expresses its deep doubts about the utility of such environmental policy tool by saying that the costs beard for the adoption of the environmental scheme in question is unjustifiably high and no benefits are gained as a counterbalance. In addition, from the answers achieved during the interviews, it comes out evident that the adoption of the mentioned environmental scheme is very often the result of suggestions tourism firms receive from their financial consultants and is perceived as a necessary precondition to access public funds and/or aids rather than the result of a specific knowledge and/or sensitivity of the environmental sustainability issue. In this perspective, a reorganization of the implementation of this type of environmental policy tools should become the subject of a more proper reflection.