Bolkestein, the tenders are really coming. And the dossier is built now
The tenders for the beaches must be launched by June 2027, and the draft model tender rewards services, accessibility and documented management. Why it pays to move now.
Anyone running a beach resort has been hearing about Bolkestein for almost twenty years, and for almost twenty years the story has always been the same: extensions, appeals, postponements, another extension. This time, though, the picture is different. The tenders for the assignment of state maritime concessions must be launched by 30 June 2027 — that is the deadline by which municipalities must open the procedures, while concessions currently in force remain valid until 30 September 2027. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport has put out for consultation the model tender scheme that municipalities will use as a template, pending its passage through the Unified Conference. And in Rimini the first tenders are already out: 27 areas of the northern coastline put out to tender from June 2026, the first test bed in Italy.
So no, this is not yet another false alarm. And it is worth understanding well how the ranking will work, because there is good news in there for those who do a good job.
The highest bidder doesn't win
The draft scheme adopts the criterion of the most economically advantageous offer. It sounds like bureaucratic jargon, but the meaning is simple: almost all of the score comes from the technical offer, that is, from the management project. In Rimini's first tender the technical offer is worth 90 points and the economic offer — the increase on the concession fee — is worth 10.
And what does the commission look at in that project? Law 118/2022, decree-law 32/2026 and the draft model tender that circulated in July are clear. What counts is the quality of service to users, and here it explicitly mentions qualified staff, hospitality, wi-fi coverage, quality of materials. Services for families and accessibility for people with disabilities count. Environmental sustainability and worker safety count. Enhancing the cultural and food-and-wine specificities of the local area counts. The organization of the business and its impact on employment count. And there is a score recognized for the technical and professional experience already acquired, that is, for those who have managed the concession well up to now.
On top of that, all bidders will be asked for an economic and financial plan proving that the operation stands on its own two feet.
The exact weights are decided by each municipality in its own tender, so no one today can promise "so many guaranteed points." But this is the direction, and it is unlikely to change: it rewards those who offer a better service and know how to prove it.
The point almost everyone underestimates
In the tender, they don't just assess what you promise to do. They also assess what you have already done.
This is where the real game is played. A resort that arrives at the tender with two seasons of online bookings behind it, real data on occupancy and revenue, foreign customers handled in four languages and a restaurant that has cut waste, can put that stuff in the technical report and the commission can verify it. Whoever, on the other hand, wakes up when the tender is published can only write good intentions, and everyone writes good intentions.
Put another way: the 2027 tender dossier starts being built in the summer of 2026.
What Hotely has to do with it
Hotely was born for Italian hospitality, and a beach resort is hospitality in every respect. There is no need to overturn anything: what is needed is for what you already do well to become visible, measurable and documented.
With the website and the booking engine, customers book umbrella and loungers from their phone and pay online. For you it means fewer phone calls and no double bookings; for the tender commission it means a modern service that is already active, not just announced.
The AI agents reply on WhatsApp, on the phone and on the website, in multiple languages, even at eleven at night when the German tourist wants to know if there is room for tomorrow. In the technical report this is called improvement of the service to tourists. In practice it is called not losing bookings while you are on the beach sorting out something else.
Accessibility, then, is not just the walkway down to the shoreline. It is also being able to book and ask for information without barriers, having menus readable from a smartphone, managing differentiated rates without doing the math by hand. All things that, with digital management, become simple to do and, above all, to prove.
If you have a bar or a food kiosk, the QR menus update in real time and translate themselves: less paper, fewer reprints, fewer mistakes. Concrete sustainability, not the brochure kind.
And on off-season business: with the experiences marketplace you can sell events, aperitifs and sports activities online even in September and October. Every event sold off season is one more line in your track record, and the track record is exactly what is needed for the economic and financial plan. Real numbers beat estimates, always.
In practice
Between the publication of the tender and the submission of the offer, timing will be tight, and in those weeks no one recovers a season of data they did not collect. Those who start now arrive at the tender with something in hand. The others arrive with a quote.
If you want to understand how it applies to your resort, write to us: in a half-hour demo we'll show you how it applies to your business, where it makes sense to start, and we'll get you up and running.
The criteria cited derive from law 118/2022, from decree-law 32/2026 and from the first tender of the Municipality of Rimini (June 2026). The national model tender scheme is still under consultation: the definitive scores will be set by the individual municipalities in their respective tenders. This article is for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice.
Sources: