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Cycle tourism is considered as a trendy opportunity of local development that should be taken into consideration by several destinations to (further) increase tourism according to the sustainable development approach. It is a broad and complex phenomenon that involves various social and economic actors. Cycle tourists are looking for new and deep experiences to better benefit from the local identities and the uniqueness of the landscape of a territory. Cycle tourism gives sustainable access to environmental and cultural resources of territories often neglected. Despite its evident potentialities, the lack of studies represents a drawback that could compromise the local development. The aim of this chapter is first to describe the characteristics of this form of tourism both in terms of its contribution to the sustainable development and of demand and supply features. Second, the study focuses on an Italian area that is strongly investing in the development of this form of mobility: an area called “Insubria,” which is located in the Lombardy region, near the Swiss border and includes, as main cities, Varese and Como. The work explores whether the supply of the tourism product in this area is aligned with the current and future demand trends of cycling and tourism. The analysis ends with some suggestions about possible improvements in the area and for the long-term industry competitiveness.

The relationship between transport and tourism is very complex to analyze due to mutual causality. Nonetheless, it is worthwhile investigating it, especially paying attention to sustainable mobility, due to the need to minimize the externalities of transport, which can otherwise reduce the attractiveness of a tourism destination. To this aim, after a brief overview of different analytical frameworks, this chapter focuses on transport at destination and sustainable mobility options, such as local public transport (PT) and active modes (walking and cycling). In particular, it provides some insights from the literature about both tourists’ mobility patterns — by taking into account both psychological aspects of tourism experience and the localization of the amenities — and specific modal choices, more focused on the impact of transport on the environment. It then concludes by presenting short summaries of each chapter of the book, in order to provide an overview of the investigated topics, which are dealing with both geographical (islands, coastal areas, natural areas) and management/administration (technical solutions, PT provision, transport demand) issues.

This study to investigate several issues related to food choice and consumption patterns in different countries, including health-related factors; economic and availability aspects; emotional determinants; social, cultural and religious influences; marketing and advertising campaigns; and finally environmental concerns.

The present study was based on a questionnaire that was exclusively prepared for the project, and which was applied to collect data in different countries, in particular Croatia, Egypt, Italy, Greece and Portugal, which are typically associated with the Mediterranean diet (MD).

The results obtained allowed, in general, to conclude that in all five countries the motivations related to health as well as environment and politics were the more relevant to determine people’s eating habits (scores varying from 0.3 to 0.7). Women were more influenced by eating motivations than men, and people with moderate exercise were more susceptible to health and environmental motivations and less to emotional, social or marketing motivations (p < 0.001 in all cases). It was also observed that people who adopted a special diet were more prone to eating motivations and that the emotional motivations were more pronounced in people with eating disorders (p < 0.001). Finally, people without chronic diseases or allergies were even more influenced by health motivations than those who actually suffered from these health problems (p < 0.001 in both cases).

This work is important because of the multinational coverage, thus allowing to evaluate the most relevant factors that influenced the food choices of the populations around the Mediterranean Sea, sharing the common link to the MD. The study allowed concluding that, in general, the food choices were primarily determined by health factors and also by concerns related to the environment and sustainability as well as by political influences.