Sustainable Tourism: The Environmental Impact of "Undetected" Tourism

In the next twenty years tourism will grow strongly and two thousand million tourists will invade present and future tourist destinations. As a consequence, tourism creates unpredictable impacts on the environment. In this context an important role is played by “undetected tourism”. This term is referred to the unorganized tourism, which takes places directly between tourists and local communities, a process still little analysed by official studies and statistics. The undetected tourism in some western areas, e.g. in Southern Italy, is socially and economically more important than the organized one. It generates hidden economical flows. Moreover, this kind of tourism causes serious damages to the environment, with decay in the quality of life. The paper proposes some corrective measures for its promotion in Southern Italy.