Industrial tourism: from the companies ability to attract tourists to the management of a visit in order to respond to the corporate social responsibility

The work aims to explain how a firm could manage a “company visit” offered to tourists, following guidelines as well as other management systems and how the visit could be considered in the Corporate Social Responsibility issues. During the development of the project, roles, tasks and steps of the industrial tourism process have been analyzed. At the same time, by a survey, reasons that move companies to organize visits have been detected. The research has been developed within the project “Destination Firm” of Regione Piemonte (North West of Italy), as part of the Italo - Switzerland Transfrontier Cooperation Project 2007-2013. 64 Italian companies (in the Piedmont Region) have been involved initially by a questionnaire, to understand how much the phenomenon of industrial tourism is widespread and how the visits are realized. At the end, the same companies have been involved in the definition of itineraries to test the methodology, highlighting opportunities to improve its efficiency and effectiveness.