Divergent risk patterns across coastal hospitality sectors in the Northern Adriatic

Coastal hospitality, encompassing both accommodation (hotels, holiday rentals, short-term rental platforms) and service establishments (restaurants, bars, tourism-oriented retail and leisure), along the Northern Adriatic coast exhibits fundamentally different spatial risk patterns across sectors. This study demonstrates this divergence by developing a dual-component Hospitality Risk Index (HRI) applied to 10,022 establishments across 400 km of coastline in Veneto and Emilia-Romagna, combined with fuzzy clustering and H3 hexagonal spatial indexing. The HRI integrates hazard projections (sea-level rise under IPCC scenarios), exposure metrics (elevation, coastal proximity, spatial density), and vulnerability indicators (structural characteristics, economic positioning). Accommodation risk differentiates by hazard geography: converted residential properties concentrated in the Venice lagoon system (HRI = 0.422) score substantially higher than purpose-built coastal hotels (HRI = 0.231), a pattern driven by differential hazard exposure that survives removal of the vulnerability component. Service risk follows a simpler spatial logic, with beachfront establishments showing highest scores (HRI = 0.440) regardless of economic positioning. These sectoral differences manifest as geographically concentrated hotspots, with service risk exhibiting two- to four-fold stronger spatial clustering than accommodation risk. External validation against two coastal flood events (Venice 2019, Emilia-Romagna 2022) confirms that flood-proximate establishments score significantly higher (p < 0.001), with the difference driven by the exposure component. The framework provides a spatial baseline for monitoring vulnerability configurations over time and offers a transferable open-source methodology for comparable Mediterranean coastal destinations.