Within the Destination Management module, a research project was carried out on the image of Milan as perceived by 1,200 tourists then present and hundreds of potential tourists in order to draw up guidelines for tourism growth strategy in the city, under the guidance of destination management academics and experts. The findings of the project, sponsored by the Milan Town Council, were discussed with the local institutions and a number of large tourism firms working in the city. These are the results of the research conducted on actual visitors in Milan.

1. TOURIST CHARACTERISTICS AND THE PERCEIVED IMAGE OF MILAN … towards Milan 2015!

3. INTRODUCTION

6. METHODOLOGY - THE SAMPLE The total sample size is 1285 . By face to face interviews conducted by students 3 sub-sets have been created according to the breakdown of tourists by segment ( leisure, business and MICE ) and by nationality ( Italians versus foreigners ) as reported by official tourism statistics in 2005. *NB: in the following graphs, MICE has been divided into “C&M” and “Trade fairs” segments if a significant difference between the two MICE components exists. INTERVIEWS SAMPLE TOTAL LEISURE TRAVELLERS (30% OF TOTAL) BUSINESS TRAVELLERS BUSINESS (42% OF TOTAL) MICE* (28% OF TOTAL) NATIONAL TRAVELLERS (44% OF TOTAL) 560 156 222 182 INTERNATIONAL TRAVELLERS (56% OF TOTAL) 725 232 318 175 TOTAL TARGET 1285 388 540 357

9. MAIN RESULTS

11. DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

17. TRIP CHARACTERISTICS

27. IMAGE AND PERSONALITY OF MILAN

36. ATTRACTIONS AND HERITAGE

40. Duomo is the most prominent landmark of Milan when compared to the others. There is a significant gap between Duomo and any other landmark. NB: This was an open answer question where the respondent was not influenced. THE LANDMARK OF THE CITY

42. TOURISTS’ SATISFACTION

48. SEGMENT PROFILES

52. CONCLUSIONS