Cycling tourism in Italy: multimodal transport behaviours in a latent class analysis

In the last years, sustainability has become an important issue in tourism debate, and more, cycling tourism as an alternative and green way of travel during holidays has gained popularity. However, the choice of other transport means, complementary to bikes, is of key importance to address the sustainability of cycling experiences. In this paper, we used primary data collected from an on-line survey on bike tourism in Italy in 2020. Besides sociodemographic and bike-related questions, 858 individuals were asked about their own transport modes to move across destinations during cycling holidays. A latent class analysis has been used to identify three groups of people with segmented preferences for bike tourism experiences, including destinations, accommodation, and multimodal behaviours. We found that the largest latent class in Italy is composed by bike tourists with the highest share of females compared to the other two classes, under 60 years old, and with a strong preference for collective transport means. Both from a management and policy perspective, our results support the claim for investments to improve the transport connection among tourism destinations, and to stimulate the creation of bike-friendly environments and tourism facilities.