Impact of trade fairs on tourism flows in Rimini. The case of four major fairs

In this paper our focus is on how the tourism flows in Rimini are impacted by the four major fairs of RiminiFiera in 2019 and 2014 (the fairs under study are SIGEP, RiminiWellness, TTG Travel Experience & Ecomondo). The above-mentioned fairs were chosen since they are the top events of RiminiFiera with the highest number of visitors annually compared to the other events. Their themes are all in diverse sectors and they absorb different market sections, from business travelers to tourism industry professionals, from sport instructors to foodservice brands and many more. In order to see how each of the four impact arrivals to Rimini, we decided to analyze the daily tourism inflows. The comparison between the two years, 2019 and 2024, will give us a broad view of how Rimini is trying to diversify the tourism offers and experiences that it is able to provide, and how these fairs gained popularity through the years while attracting more visitors and contributing to bringing benefits to the city. It also shows whether the inflows to Rimini are being impacted by the occurrence of these four fairs, which is the answer that we seek in this study.