Spatial effects of a pandemic on Tourism: discovering territorial pathologies and resilience

The pandemic known as Covid-19 provides tourism studies with an opportunity for an unprecedented analysis of the spatiality of the phenomenon, both for highlighting some territorial pathologies generated by non-sustainable forms of tourism and for discovering the capacity of tourism resources to face the crisis and discover new functions. The spatial-temporal nature and procedural behaviour of the contagion show different territorial dynamics, considered both as pathologies or opportunities, related to tourism at different scales. In both cases, some signs of territorial resilience emerge and reveal potential guidelines for future tourism planning to follow. The paper addresses the two dimensions of the phenomenon, global and local, showing its contribution in terms of impact and territorial resilience, taking as an example the Bergamo area, one of the most significant outbreaks of the Covid-19 pandemic.