There is no doubt that Covid has hit the tourism sector hard. And also, on the fact that its effects continue and will continue to be felt in the coming months. This state of affairs is certified by the data from the monthly Confturismo Observatory on the confidence index of the Italian traveler, created in collaboration with Swg: 57 points (on a scale from 0 to 100), 12 less than in September 2019.
But this is not the only warning sign. The index recorded, between February and May of this year, values below the seasonal averages and from July the trend of the index returned to having the same fluctuations of the previous year, but always – systematically – with 10-12 points less. In practice, demand seems to have overcome the Covid-19 “shock”, but settling at significantly lower values than in the past.
Therefore, there are many signs that “tell” the same thing: the tourism crisis is now structural. Faced with this situation, the president of Confturismo, Luca Patanè, stressed that “the measures to support tourism currently available are absolutely not enough”.
“The government must recognize the role of tourism,” said Patanè, “and fully recover its potential, especially to obtain and better target the recovery fund which represent the latest train for the revival of the sector. We are leaders in world tourism, and we need to act as a leader right now too. For example, by subjecting all outgoing and returning tourists to rapid Covid tests, to safely reopen international flows, and urging other countries to do the same: in this way, both incoming and outgoing tourism can restart. In the absence of this assumption, any intervention done so far will have been useless”.
Returning to the research data, the only positive news is the resumption of interest in the cities of art − towns and small villages in the programming of Italians for autumn “short breaks”: nothing comparable to real holidays, given that these are small breaks of 2-3 days at most, but for these destinations, which continue to be heavily affected by the lack of foreign tourism (arrivals and presences -95% between March and June), it is a small sign of encouragement.
Between March and May, Italy lost over 80 million tourists