Riccione Updating Tourism

Riccione is probably the Italian destination where the “sun & beach” model has reached its climax, and the mass tourism has most shaped the urban environment through the logics of continuity, repetition, extreme homogenization, and density. A sophisticated model, based on affordable accommodations owned by a multiplicity of small enterprises which, in the face of epochal changes in tourism, are struggling with self-renovating. Against this trend and with the aim of improving in size, quality and competitiveness the hosting system, the present research proposes a strategy aimed at introducing new hotel formats. By analyzing the existing building stock and its poor differentiation, the project develops the idea of “splitting” the hotels' basic components and re-organizing them across the urban fabric according to different procedures involving, for example, the reuse of unsuitable and abandoned “boarding houses”. Such operation results in a range of new accommodation facilities shared by multiple structures: potentially more appealing, differentiated, and resilient to the changing demand of the market. Relationships and usage sequences which normally happen inside every single plot get spread across the city; touristic services, detached from hotels and then clustered together, can reach a critical mass enabling them to play a new role within the urban context. The study, developed in collaboration with public and private stakeholders, is aimed at informing regional policies about touristic accommodation typologies with more feasible and up-to-date solutions.