2. Sardinia: Destination and Territorial Profile

Island Geography, Settlement and Connectivity

Sardinia is an autonomous Italian region and the second-largest island in the Mediterranean. Its territorial scale, insularity and varied physical geography are central to the way tourism operates and to the environmental pressures the destination must manage.

The island has a predominantly mountainous and hilly interior, with plateaux, valleys, agricultural plains, forests, wetlands, river systems and a highly varied coastline. The Campidano is the largest plain, extending for approximately 110 kilometres between the Gulf of Cagliari and the Gulf of Oristano. Sardinia’s coastline extends for about 1,800 kilometres, creating a tourism geography shaped by beaches, coves, islands, ports, lagoons, marine habitats and coastal settlements.[sardegnaimpresa]

This territorial diversity is an important asset, but it also means that Sardinia cannot be managed as a single, homogeneous visitor destination. A coastal municipality experiencing high summer demand faces different challenges from a rural inland area seeking to retain population and services. A marine protected area has different ecological thresholds from a city, a harbour or an archaeological site. The environmental implications of visitor access vary between dune systems, wetlands, forest routes, coastal roads, small islands and urban waterfronts.

The island’s settlement pattern is equally important. Sardinia comprises 377 municipalities under the regional local-authority structure cited by the Sardinia regional investment agency. Population, services, transport access, accommodation supply and tourism intensity are unevenly distributed. This requires destination management to work at several scales simultaneously:[sardegnaimpresa]

• Island-wide, for climate adaptation, transport connectivity, environmental policy and tourism monitoring.
• Regional sub-area, for coast-to-inland relationships, mobility corridors and shared infrastructure.
• Municipal, for accommodation, public space, water, waste, local access and community impacts.
• Site-specific, for beaches, protected areas, ports, trails, heritage sites and sensitive ecosystems.

Insularity creates practical dependencies. External access is principally provided by air and sea transport, while internal visitor movement remains strongly dependent on roads and private vehicles in many areas. In 2024, Sardinia’s total line and charter air passenger traffic reached 10,559,254 passengers, comprising 7,082,072 domestic and 3,477,182 international passengers—an annual increase of 10.5% from 2023.[regione.sardegna]

Air-passenger movements cannot be treated as tourism arrivals: passengers may be residents, business travellers, visiting friends and relatives, transit travellers or tourists; individual visitors may also make multiple journeys. Nevertheless, the figures demonstrate the island’s dependence on aviation for external connectivity and the scale of mobility demand that airports, roads and destination services must accommodate.

Sardinia’s territorial profile therefore presents both opportunity and constraint. Its coastline, natural diversity, cultural landscapes and island identity create a highly differentiated destination offer. At the same time, long travel distances, seasonal access peaks, fragmented settlement patterns, sensitive ecosystems and uneven infrastructure capacity require tourism to be managed through place-based evidence rather than island-wide assumptions.